Has anyone built this wagon?

[Ben269]

This looks like a fun project.  It is the 53 ford woody wagon from Jimmy Flintstone.  Has anyone built one of these?  I'm wondering about the fit, and the quality.  I bought the 37 ford chopped cab from them and it is pretty good.  

 

Edited January 26, 2017 by Ben269

[moparfarmer]

Got  friend on another board who built one..Very nicely done resin and his built up very nice..You will be pleased...

 

[Ben269]

Great, I think I will order one!

 

[DeeCee]

This looks like a fun project.  It is the 53 ford woody wagon from Jimmy Flintstone.  Has anyone built one of these?  I'm wondering about the fit, and the quality.  I bought the 37 ford chopped cab from them and it is pretty good.  

 

Good luck finding a hood for it, and glass, make sure you have the RIGHT donor kit before you buy it, or it could cost you a couple of kits just to build it. 

Edited January 26, 2017 by DeeCee

[Mark]

I've got a built one (not built by me) and it's really nice.  The main thing you have to watch for with JF bodies is that the rocker panels are often further apart than those of the donor kit's body.  They tend to de-mold the bodies before they are fully set (probably to save wear and tear on the molds), and they then take a set with the sides bowed out slightly from pulling them off of the core of the mold.  This affects hood fit on Fifties cars with taller hoods.

Before starting any alterations to any of the donor parts, you need to get the body pulled 100% into the correct shape.  If the rocker panels are further apart on the resin body than on the plastic one (hold the two bodies bottom-to-bottom to check), you need to mock up the resin body with the donor chassis and whatever interior, and pull those body sides in.  When you hold the resin body with the sides pulled in to match the donor kit body, the donor kit hood should fit either body exactly the same.  

Don't use rubber bands to pull everything into shape.  They dry out, and will often pull other areas out of shape while correcting the areas you want to fix.  I stick the body sides to the chassis with hot glue, and let the whole thing set for a week or two.  After that, you should be able to peel off the hot glue and the body should stay in the corrected shape.  I've done a couple of them ('51 Chevy sedan delivery, a couple of '53 Studebaker bodies) in this way, and in each instance the plastic hoods fit as well as they do on the original kit bodies. 

[Mike999]

Thanks for all the info, copied it for future reference.  I have the JF sedan delivery version of that '53 body. This thread may reduce my aggravation when/if I get around to using it.

I've sometimes got resin bodies in shape just using hot water.  That worked with an ancient '40 Ford 4-dr. sedan resin body.  The 4-dr. body was badly bowed inward on both sides - the bottom of the body sides were almost touching.  I stretched it out to fit on the AMT '40 fenders, then ducked both in very hot water.  The resin body un-bowed and has stayed that way ever since. 

Edited January 26, 2017 by Mike999
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[Mr. Metallic]

Flintstone definitely has a lot of cool and inventive bodies out there. I have bought a lot, and have built a few. Their quality has also improved greatly over the last 6-7 years over what they had in the past

One thing to be aware of however, is mold release. Make sure you thoroughly clean, rinse and dry the body. It's common practice for resin casters to use mold release, which isn't a big deal. But the stuff that has been on some of the bodies I've gotten from Flintstone has been very stubborn. Just when I think I've gotten it all, the first coat of primer flakes off. So, just be very thorough with your cleanup process and definitely spray a coat of primer before doing any bodywork so you know that you've removed all that mold release. once that's done your build should be pretty straightforward and pleasant.

 

Here's my most recent build of a Flintstone body

[Mark]

He's got a Ford Econoline van body out now; I just picked one up (he's selling direct on eBay now).  It looks like it's mastered off of a diecast one that I saw somewhere awhile back.  The castings look good; really clean, nice panel lines, and not nearly as much mold release as on earlier bodies.  It measures out slightly undersize (1/25.7 or so), but then again the intended chassis donor (IMC/Lindberg Dodge A-100) is similarly undersize, so everything should fit together pretty well.  Hopefully he'll eventually offer a pickup version as well. 

[Ben269]

Thanks for all the input, I do appreciate it.   I'm pretty sure it uses the Lindberg 53 ford as a donor.  Mark, when you use the hot glue, does it peel of the body cleanly?  I think I will give that a try. 

 

[Ben269]

That Edsel looks really clean, by the way.

[Mark]

The hot glue peels off.  I don't think it leaves a residue, but you will pull it all off before doing the rest of the trimming/fitting work, so you're going to be cleaning the body at least once or twice anyway.