AMT '40 Ford Construction
There was a good 1/4" gap between the upper body and its mating surface on the chassis/fender unit so drastic action was called for. As you can imagine I was more than a bit nervous about using a heavy duty C-clamp on my nice shiny paint job, even with the added foam pads I acquired from some shelves ordered from a glass cutter's shop. I figured tube cement would create a nice strong bond and left it 24 hours to dry just to be sure.
However, not a damn thing happened as you can see! Bollocks!! The body sides didn't even come close to contacting the glued surfaces. This calls for even more drastic action:
The elaborate wood & rubber band contraption held the body down whilst the C-clamps held the sides tightly in place. Not taking any chances this time I used epoxy. Araldite is good stuff in spite of the fact that when mixed it looks like the contents of one's nasal passages during a particularly bad sinus cold. It was at this point that I figured it was all going to go horribly pear shaped and it was with trembling hands that I took the clamps off a day later, but apart from a couple of minor scuffs in the paint that were easily polished out it worked just fine. Wheww!!
The moulded-on starter was ground off, the gaping hole filled with Milliput and a better starter from the spares box (yes, I have a car spares box now!) was added. I cut the horrible fan belt away from the pulleys, cleaned up the bottom two and scratchbuilt a new one for the alternator with the tiny fan taken from a Detail Master p/e set. Using a tip from "Scale Auto Modeler", I stuck two pieces of masking tape together to form a double thickness and then cut a thin strip from this for the fan belt which was painted flat black and super glued in place. Quick, easy and far superior to the mutant fan belt in the kit. Me like. Good. Ugg.
Above left & right: Again showing its age, AMT had the metal axle going right across as in the left picture. I epoxied this in place and cut out the middle part with the trusty ol' Dremel. This is the custom dropped axle and was originally a chrome piece but I stripped the chrome off and painted it gloss black to match the rest of the suspension components.
Left: Horrible kit tie rod/brace vs. the new bits made from .040" plastic rod.
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