Maisto '65 El Camino--Pics Added 11/17

Snake45 · November 2, 2018

I've had one of these in black with red interior for years, but a few months ago picked up a second one in Nassau Blue with black interior, which I like even more. Last night I got in the mood to Snake-Fu at least one of them, so dug them out. Was surprised to find that they had two different chassis! The old black one has posable front wheels. The new blue one has straight-through wire axles, which I much prefer as it will make wheel replacement easier.

One, according the label on the chassis, was made in China, the other in Thailand. The bodies and interiors look identical, right down to the tampo printing.

They seem to be true 1/25. At least they are exactly the same length and width as the AMT kit body.

Overall shape is very nice. The biggest problem with them is that the El Camino has sedan-type doors, with a window frame. The diecasts have hardtop-type doors, with a separate vent window and its frame. The bodies have the window frame molded in, but of course it doesn't move with the doors, and there's a noticeable gap between the molded-in frame and the vent window frames on the doors.

Still, not bad little cheap diecasts. I'll probably replace the wheels on the blue one with something else. Will post photos after the usual Snake-Fu session.

Edited November 17, 2018 by Snake45

Gramps46 · November 2, 2018

Now that is interesting about the window frames and the front axle.

This is my Motomax 1970 SS 396 El Camino and it has the straight axle and window frames.

Snake45 · November 8, 2018

Decided to try to answer the challenge. Spent about 3 hours today filling that window frame gap. Didn't come up with a perfect solution, but a workable one. Hope to get it finished and pics up this weekend.

Snake45 · November 17, 2018

This pic of the unmodified black one shows what I'm talking about re the door window frame. Looks awful with that gap and there's no easy fix.

So what I did was, cut a strip of .030” styrene, bend it to the right angle, fit it in very carefully, and superglue it into the body. Then I silver Sharpied the whole window frame This of course required filing/trimming back the front edge of the vent window frame on the door. Fortunately the doors on this one are VERY easy to remove, being held in place only by a leaf spring under the hood.

This thing fought me every step of the way. When gluing in the left door frame strip, I dropped it and got superglue on the inside of the windshield. If it were the other side it wouldn't have been so bad, I could have polished it out in-place, but this was over the steering wheel which prevented access. So I had to remove the dashboard, which required grinding out two rivets holding it in place. As long as I had the grinder out, I went ahead and ground off the rivet holding the glass in place and took it out to polish the superglue off the inside.

Then I silver Sharpied the bed trim and other trim and ran a black wash in the grille and painted the turn signals and backup lights white.

I decided I didn't like the stock wheel covers, so replaced them with 6-hole Rally Wheels from an AMT '72 Nova and big and little AMT hollow vinyl tires. It turned out to be IMPOSSIBLE to remove the model wheels from their axles and I ended up having to cut the wire axles with a cutoff wheel in a Dremel—right in the middle, the only place I could get to it.

I ended up with 10 or 12 hours in the thing. But it all turned out pretty much okay, more or less. I have a '65 Elky on my shelf for $15 and about a fourth of the time it would have taken me to build and paint and polish out the AMT kit. I still want to build one someday, but in the meantime, this one fills that slot on the shelf.