After many hours of heartache (and plenty of red wine!), it’s looking very reasonable and thankfully, nearly done!  As the carbon decals I used was a mixture of tones (and too light), I ened up having to apply a couple of coats of Vallejo Air black in order to tone down the overall effect to a more charcoal- like color.   The Jordan decals are for the 1/20 scale Tamiya (and therefore slightly too small for this 1/18) so I’ll scan and enlarge them and print a fresh lot on my HP inkjet.  So far, I’ve applied six coats of Johnsons Clear, but another six probably wouldn’t hurt the finish!