03-18-2021, 09:04 PM
I was given this Proto2000 Mather stock car as a basket case a couple weeks ago
The original builder made a complete mess of the car, using Testors tube glue to assemble it, leaving some parts off and gluing some in the wrong place. I also found the car to be incredibly heavy. After some prying with an exacto-knife and a small screwdriver, I managed to get the roof, roofwalk and the doors off.
After that I found out why it was so heavy, 1 1/2 oz. of extra weight was glued inside. I guess it was added for better tracking? I also found that the original proto wheelsets were replaced with all plastic ones, probably the source of the poor tracking. They went into the garbage.
I scraped the glue off as best I could and started to replace/add the details. The original grab irons were MIA so I replaced the ladder grabs with some ladder stock, all other grabs were replaced with Tichy wire ones.
I also removed the original lettering with a fiberglass brush. This is a pretty effective tool for this since the car sides are wood and the brush also scratched the wood sides a bit, adding some wood grain.
The original roof walk was pretty much unusable with large globs of glue on it. I replaced it with a spare resin casting from the parts box. I also noticed that some of the side boards were broken so I fixed those with some styrene strip. The original brake wheel and housing were badly damaged so I replaced those with tichy parts as well.
one of the last things I did before painting was to add the roofwalk end supports and check the coupler height. I used some metal wheelsets in the trucks and the car tracks perfectly now.
The original builder made a complete mess of the car, using Testors tube glue to assemble it, leaving some parts off and gluing some in the wrong place. I also found the car to be incredibly heavy. After some prying with an exacto-knife and a small screwdriver, I managed to get the roof, roofwalk and the doors off.
After that I found out why it was so heavy, 1 1/2 oz. of extra weight was glued inside. I guess it was added for better tracking? I also found that the original proto wheelsets were replaced with all plastic ones, probably the source of the poor tracking. They went into the garbage.
I scraped the glue off as best I could and started to replace/add the details. The original grab irons were MIA so I replaced the ladder grabs with some ladder stock, all other grabs were replaced with Tichy wire ones.
I also removed the original lettering with a fiberglass brush. This is a pretty effective tool for this since the car sides are wood and the brush also scratched the wood sides a bit, adding some wood grain.
The original roof walk was pretty much unusable with large globs of glue on it. I replaced it with a spare resin casting from the parts box. I also noticed that some of the side boards were broken so I fixed those with some styrene strip. The original brake wheel and housing were badly damaged so I replaced those with tichy parts as well.
one of the last things I did before painting was to add the roofwalk end supports and check the coupler height. I used some metal wheelsets in the trucks and the car tracks perfectly now.