85 GMC Van 8/9/17 Fixed for Fotki

[Foxer]

Here's a bookmark place for this build ... I'm sure I'll have to answer to someone when Dec '11 comes around and it's not finished!

This year I'm not putting cookies and milk out for Santa .. it's gonna be sandpaper and glue so he'll give a helping hand. and maybe a brush to get the shavings out of his beard ..

Edited August 9, 2017 by Foxer

[Nick Winter]

Nice Dog

[Foxer]

Nice Dog

eheh .. that's Toby. I'm going to have to learn a little figure painting to get him in shape. Here he is by the van ...

He's going to be sitting inside, so I HAVE the get the hinges working!

[Foxer]

Casting of the door handle and hinges on some spare bodies took some time as I searched for some working material to make the molds. The Tamiya Epoxy Putty I had was too dried up to use so I went to Michael's to see if something there was usable. All they had was some Mighty Putty ... an epoxy putty in a cylinder you just slice and mix. It had Billy Mays photo on the package, so I was leery about this product. It worked as advertised, but was much too grainy for mold making and was very sticky and messy. The squish molds I tried were very undefined.

 

My LHS was open today so I went up to see what he had for epoxy putty. He had Milliput so I added that to my arsenal. Then, I remembered the RTV Silicone Putty I still had from a Micro-Mark resin kit I had from over 10 years ago. I really liked that material and figured I had nothing to lose mixing the 2 part putty and giving it a try despite it's age. Low and behold, IT WORKED! The molds came out with well defined impressions that will be fully useable. I'm going to cut out a square at the door handles and insert the casting as recommended by Danno in another post I had asked about this ... Thanks Danno!

Yeah, while I was at it I figured a cast of the VW emblem off my OTHER van project would be a good use of the leftover silicone.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Foxer

[cposada]

Love that exhaust! It turned out so nice. The interior pod and the panels look perfect. The color seems to be spot on and it actually looks like the material used for the 1:1 vehicle. Nice work! Looking forward to more of this.

cposada...

[Danno]

My pleasure, Mike. Good luck with the process. Be sure to let us know & see how it turns out.

[Foxer]

The door handle for the side door is in and just got the first primer coat to check for finish bodywork needed. Small spots and finishing up the door edges needed. I decided to just cut out the handle from a spare body rather than cast it. It was much easier than constructing the mold. The hinges I need did work well by squish casting some and pouring molten plastic into the molds ... just plastic sprue and Ambroid. It took about 8 tries to get 4 good hinges but it was simple and can just glue them to body now with regular cement.

Cut handle out of spare body:

cut out hole for handle and glued a backing plate on:

After first primer coat: (ignore that run!)

Edited August 9, 2017 by Foxer

[Foxer]

I've also been back on the hinges. I chucked some 3/32" (.0938") round plastic tubing into the Dremel and turned it down to about .074" with a sanding stick. This was as small as I dared as the wall was getting thin. The aluminum tube I have been trying is .0625". I thought the tube still looked large but in the photo below it doesn't seem that much larger. These hinges ARE out of scale no matter what, but there's not much choice. The aluminum scales to 1.56" and the plastic to 1.85" ... not that much difference.

I was going to ask if anyone thought they would look too gross with the plastic tubes, but looking at the numbers as I type this makes me say .. screw it.. the plastic tubes win! These will "weld" to the attachment tabs with no problem and will solve my glue problem!

Thanks for all the input along the way to solve the glue problem I was having. It's SO good to have you all here to bounce things off of!!

Edited August 9, 2017 by Foxer

[Blake Rogers]

All I can say is, you had me at GMC

[Foxer]

Here's some shots of the hinge mold process. I used RTV silicone putty and squish cast them on an old body. Then I tried something different and used melted sprue to cast them. It wasn't the best material to use but it worked. The toughest part was getting the sprue to fill the mold as it wanted to lift out. After adding more Ambroid to the mix it behaved better. I probably cast over a dozen hinges trying to get 4, but it was quick and cheap. You can see it got stringy as it was out of the jar longer. The photo's are of a set that had air bubbles and were recycled!

They are now glued (with regular styrene glue!) to the body and I got the window trim installed using .02 x .04 strips. The small window looks like it needs to be redone. It was protesting the bending and twist going around the small radius.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Foxer

[Chuck Most]

Love watching this one progress, Mike!

[Danno]

Nice!

[crowe-t]

Mike,

The new hinges look perfect and appear to be in scale too! Great work so far.

Mike.

[Foxer]

Mike,

The new hinges look perfect and appear to be in scale too! Great work so far.

Mike.

Thanks everyone. Unfortunately, these aren't the hinges that have been giving glue troubles. Those are for the back doors, but I think a solution is at hand.

[crowe-t]

Thanks everyone. Unfortunately, these aren't the hinges that have been giving glue troubles. Those are for the back doors, but I think a solution is at hand.

What was I thinking! It's the opening doors you are having some trouble with.

Still, the side door hinges do look great.

[Foxer]

The small side window trim is being done over and thought I should show how I did the window trim. I taped a piece of index card behind the window opening to give something to act as a stop and guide to get the trim even with the inside edge of the body. I used .02" x .04" Evergreen strip as the body was a hair over .04" thick at the windows and the .02" thickness bent tight into the window radius. I worked around the window about 1/8" at a time as I positioned the trim strip and touched a fine brush of Ambroid plastic cement.

With this trim complete I can finally put a coat of primer on the whole body and start getting the little areas needing smoothing!

Note the fine hair focus on my camera!

Edited August 9, 2017 by Foxer

[charlie8575]

Impressive work with the window trim and those hinges, Mike. You're giving me ideas for a very challenging rebuild I'll have coming up.

Charlie Larkin

[Foxer]

Impressive work with the window trim and those hinges, Mike. You're giving me ideas for a very challenging rebuild I'll have coming up.

Charlie Larkin

Awesome, Charlie! If I remotely gave you a idea for one of your builds, I've done my job.

[cruz]

Love all those small and subtle details!

[Foxer]

Not on the body, but was a good first test of the paint. It looks like I got the wrong color from Paintscratch.com ... my fault. I was in another model where Medium Blue Metallic was the darkest color. I thought it looked light, but you never know from a computer image. This is definitely too light. I went back and put in the correct model, G3500, and there was a Dark Blue Metallic. This HAS to be the one, so maybe it will come by the time bodywork is done. A darn good chance there!

Anyway, this paint went on like butter as usual. I find their paints to go on very even and is easy to get a good paint job. It comes as a brush touch up paint so I added about a twice the paint amount in lacquer thinner to spray it.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Foxer

[charlie8575]

To my eye, Mike, that looks a lot like the blue vinyl GM used in its trucks at that time. It's a pretty color, too.

Charlie Larkin

[RyanSilva]

Looking good Mike!

Update on the wheels are, I got the first master in silicone now curing, tomorrow I will see what my copy will look like, then I can fit one of my 8 bolt 3/4ton hub in the center. (stole it from a amt dirt track car)

What do the front wheels look like, just a dust cap conical type center?

[Foxer]

Looking good Mike!

Update on the wheels are, I got the first master in silicone now curing, tomorrow I will see what my copy will look like, then I can fit one of my 8 bolt 3/4ton hub in the center. (stole it from a amt dirt track car)

What do the front wheels look like, just a dust cap conical type center?

AWESOME! I will defiantly be getting a set!

[carchub]

This is so cool! This is what I hope to do in the future, I've always wanted to junk an old van like this! My dad used to have a Chrysler one from Holliday Inn, the only expense we ever made on it was gas prices (full tank was $67 in 2005!) because we bought it for $600 and sold it to a boneyard for $600!

Edited December 20, 2010 by carchub

[Foxer]

This is so cool! This is what I hope to do in the future, I've always wanted to junk an old van like this! My dad used to have a Chrysler one from Holliday Inn, the only expense we ever made on it was gas prices (full tank was $67 in 2005!) because we bought it for $600 and sold it to a boneyard for $600!

THIS is what I'm talking about! My daughter said she bought this van for $500 and sold it for the same

Don't know if any Chrysler vans are around, though.

Edited December 25, 2010 by Foxer