Poor Parts Fit

[raildogg]

Did you ever get a kit that was poorly engineered? I've been building a ROG W900 Wrecker, the Fred's Automotive issue, and it's a dog. First, it was chrome that was too thick, and had wrinkles in key araes, then it was mold shift flash everywhere now it's the air cleaner cans have the mounting tabs reversed. And to top that off the duct work that connect the turbo to the cans interferes with things on the fire wall and causes massive miss alignment issues. Yes, I double checked my build orientations for, if I glued things backwards, and I did not. So, now I'm stuck re desighning the turbo duct works and trying to make the cleaner cans presentable.and finding a way to make corrugated ducts from scratch. Man did you ever have one of those day's. I just can't get a break on this one. Just thought I'd share my angst. Thanks guys

[Blown03SVT]

The last issue of the 33 Willys street machine... the 57 Corvette gasser, and the 37 Chevy gasser come to mind. Now, granted this was when Racing Champions was handling all the old AMT kits.

[Scuderia]

monogram Testarossa, AMT 97 Trans Am. That Trans Am i built a decade ago, fit like poo. Hated it so much, decided to try it again now that I'm a bit older. Same issues, and even worse is the AMT has no side-mirrors.

[Scalper]

OH RATS... I have that 57 Corvette Gasser on my shelf too. I wonder if it has any good parts as a donor kit?

Yeah the rims and tires. they are pretty nice

[Guest G Holding]

Don't let Harry see this, we could get 10 or 12 PAGES on Pocher kits......

[Harry P.]

Don't let Harry see this, we could get 10 or 12 PAGES on Pocher kits......

All I'll say is... if you think one of your 1/24 kits is hard to build, try a Pocher and you'll know what real frustration is like!

[slusher]

l have to agree with the monogram Testarossa its bad.

[Jordan White]

The worst kits are any where exterior body parts must be installed with no tabs, especially body color parts that must be installed after the interior tub.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Gee willikers, I guess I have the wrong attitude. I don't see poor-fit issues as problems, but as skill-builders. Instead of throwing them in the trash-compactor, send me all your badly-engineered models. I'll even pay shipping.

[Steven Zimmerman]

Crybabies ! Try workin on a resin body, where you have to scratchbuild your interior, frame, glass, dashboard....shall I go on ?

[Draggon]

ANY of Revells "saints and sinners" series, and all of those "Buttera" kits and spin offs. I'm no newbie, but that dang Buttera kit has got me stymied. Not gonna send 'em to you Bill, I am committed to building at least one before I die!

Edited January 23, 2013 by Draggon

[Blown03SVT]

OH RATS... I have that 57 Corvette Gasser on my shelf too. I wonder if it has any good parts as a donor kit?

I refuse to round file a model because it is kicking my butt. I did build all the Gassers I mentioned. LOTS or trial fitting, filing and super glue with zip kicker. The Vette got me the worst though. The chrome was terrible as was with the others, the windsheild was about 3/16th's of an into wide, and the side coves were way out to lunch. Forget about the front hinge. I will eventually scratch build one someday that actually works. The wheels are okay, but the rims are too small for the rear slicks.

ANY of Revells "saints and sinners" series, and all of those "Buttera" kits and spin offs. I'm no newbie, but that dang Buttera kit has got me stymied. Not gonna send 'em to you Bill, I am committed to building at least one before I die!

I've built a few Buttera kits... very fiddly but you can make them look alright. They are right up there with the old Revell Gassers like the 41 Willys, 51 Henry J, 38 (?) Anglia and the 50 Austin. Lots of patience required.

[Gregg]

OMG

Da Big Kahuna speaks.

I just went through this with the AMT/Model King '69 Camaro Funny Car kit.

Granted, the box art that our friend Sean Svendsen did is fantastic, and makes you want to buy and build the kit, but the fit of almost everything in the kit is horrible!

I lost the last two remaining hairs on my head on this one.

The front end caused me so much problems, I ended up sending Sean a note, asking for some more pics and clarifications.

He came through like a champ, and this should help with an article on the build of this very cool kit.

The old AMT instructions don't match up to the kit parts, the kit parts don't fit, and nothing goes together like it should.

Too bad it wasn't re-engineered to today's standards, they would have had an incredible 5-star kit on their hands!

Thanks for the help, Sean!

[Chuck Most]

All I'll say is... if you think one of your 1/24 kits is hard to build, try a Pocher and you'll know what real frustration is like!

Still can't be as bad as rebuilding the front end on an old Dodge truck that's been cobbled with parts from who knows how many model years by wanna-be mechanics over the decades... I now know why Mustang II IFS setups are so popular.

[jas1957]

AMT '53 & '55 Vette, The bodies, interiors & chassis are all nice but try putting them all together & it just don't work.

[Jantrix]

Come join the Nightmare Kits CBP, and hang with folks in the same boat.

[Eshaver]

Crybabies ! Try workin on a resin body, where you have to scratchbuild your interior, frame, glass, dashboard....shall I go on ?

RIGHT ON............................

[Guest]

Try a Revell '57 Ranchero if you want some punishment. Getting the multi piece body together is the easy part. Getting the chassis to fit the body so that it doesn't look like it has a three inch body lift is another all together.

[Tom Kren]

AMT 76 Gremlin this kit sucks nothing fits thew mine at the wall after about a hr or fitting parts that dont fit! Nice box art is all its got going for it.lol

[Blown03SVT]

Crybabies ! Try workin on a resin body, where you have to scratchbuild your interior, frame, glass, dashboard....shall I go on ?

I pretty sure there is a difference here. If you buy a "kit" you have a little expectation it is diesigned to sort of fit together. Buying a resin body with the intent of scratch building everything, you knew what you were getting into. If that's you skill set then I applaud you.

[Ace-Garageguy]

You want to talk frustration with parts where "you have a little expectation it is diesigned (sic) to sort of fit together" ? Try building a real hot-rod, and spending countless hours re-engineering very expensive parts that were billed as "fitting together", (where the guys manufacturing the junk are making WAY more money than you are) reworking and finishing their stuff so it actiually goes down the road. Every day. Under a deadline.

[Blown03SVT]

Bill... while I have never built a 1:1 kit car, or a street rod from ground up I have had my frustrations with old camamro's and newer Mustangs. Just because it says it fits, does not always mean it will. I recall an Edelbrock TPI set up that I had to add EGR passages to the TB that should have been there. The car would have never ran right without them, hell no TPI injected car would have ran right without them. Bolt on my butt... Also the term with hi po parts that come to mind is "MADE IN CHINA". Off shore manufacturing at its finest.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Bill... while I have never built a 1:1 kit car, or a street rod from ground up I have had my frustrations with old camamro's and newer Mustangs. Just because it says it fits, does not always mean it will. I recall an Edelbrock TPI set up that I had to add EGR passages to the TB that should have been there. The car would have never ran right without them, hell no TPI injected car would have ran right without them. Bolt on my butt... Also the term with hi po parts that come to mind is "MADE IN CHINA". Off shore manufacturing at its finest.

Yup...but we keep doing it, so we must love it, right? Either that or we're just masochists. Nah...it's love.

To the complainers : If problem-solving is part of your definition of 'fun', then building cars, models or 1:1, is sure to be a blast. Besides, all these problem-solving exercises make you SMARTER !!! If you just want a shelf full of pretty toy cars for zero effort, buy die-cast.

Edited January 23, 2013 by Ace-Garageguy

[Blown03SVT]

It is love... a little bit of fiddling here and there is expected. In the end you know when you built it with your own two hands it becomes a part of you.

[Art Anderson]

OMG

Da Big Kahuna speaks.

I just went through this with the AMT/Model King '69 Camaro Funny Car kit.

Granted, the box art that our friend Sean Svendsen did is fantastic, and makes you want to buy and build the kit, but the fit of almost everything in the kit is horrible!

I lost the last two remaining hairs on my head on this one.

The front end caused me so much problems, I ended up sending Sean a note, asking for some more pics and clarifications.

He came through like a champ, and this should help with an article on the build of this very cool kit.

The old AMT instructions don't match up to the kit parts, the kit parts don't fit, and nothing goes together like it should.

Too bad it wasn't re-engineered to today's standards, they would have had an incredible 5-star kit on their hands!

Thanks for the help, Sean!

Every model company has had their share of "klinkers" to be sure, but it might be wise to consider that many model kits (not limited to model cars, BTW) are reissues from a day and age when the "science" (if you will) of creating a plastic kit was nowhere what it is today in the 21st Century. Many of the so-called "iconic" model kits of the 1960's weren't all that good when compared to the newest of tooling from the likes of Revell or Moebius, and for a number of reasons:

For starters, if there was ever an "analog" era of model car kit design, the first 20 years or so of plastic model kit design were analog personified. By that I mean, there was no CAD, there was no CAM back then. A master modeler back then, termed a "pattern maker", had to carve by hand each and every part of a model kit, from wood! To facilitate that, those pattern makers (and the early ones were not particularly miniaturists, but rather came out of the die-casting industry, and while they could certainly read a set of drawings and interpret them, they had to do that interpretation in a scale several times larger than the final injection-molded model kit. Generally with model cars, that meant using say, 1:10 scale wooden masters for a 1:25 scale model car, or 1:12 scale for a 1/24 scale kit, those larger scale sizes being easily "dialed down" numerically to their respective final scale sizes. Body shells were universally sculpted in wood, SOLID wood blocks, every bit and piece of the engine, chassis (even fairly delicate suspension parts and exhaust systems) fabricated in wood. These masters were often then pressed into blocks of clay, from which an impression could be made by using rubber molds for pouring resin into, to create further masters for the molds (dies). Once both halves of a master mold (still in the larger scale in which the wooden master parts were fabricated/carved) were made, the resulting master mold could be clamped together, and some form of liquid resin injected into them, giving hardened resin castings that could then be test fitted, and the master molds "adjusted" to the point that they could get parts to fit as they should. Once that worked out, the master molds could be transferred to a mechanical 3-axis "pantograph" which had both a "stylus" for following the shapes and contours of the approved master mold, and a rotary milling cutter which would translate those shapes into blocks of steel (or often times, a tooling metal alloy "beryllium copper", all the while reducing the "scale" from say, 1:10 scale down to 1:25 AND making a "female" shape in that steel while following a "male" shape on the larger master mold.

Those solid wood body masters (also done in the same larger scale as all the little parts) were cast in a resin material, and then the multiple slide mold cavities pantographed into steel, the mold slides separated where they needed to be, in order to allow a one-piece body shell, and the inside or core mold created in a rather imprecise manner, which is why so few model car kits from 35yrs ago on back had any sort of true engine bay molded into the body shell.

All of this not only cost a ton of money, but also meant very long lead times for new model car kits. In addition, it made really good parts fit, especially if the kit was designed with lots of intricate parts.

One last thing here: Plastic model kits were engineered back then for different, harder grades of styrene plastic than are generally used today. That older plastic was a lot harder, more brittle, yet was far less susceptible to shrink marks with those older, thicker body shells.

Art