1955 AMT Coupe De Ville

[kennb]

Not everyone who might be interested in this reads my thread so I am posting this way also for now....

Would like to try to save it if I can figure out a way to straighten the body,,,,May have ot be a convertable...

[DrKerry]

I have a front clip and rear bumper from one of those I bought off Ebay. I had to straighten the front clip out because it had the same twist in it. I'm trying to put the clip onto a 55 Nomad to build a "Caddy-Mad" kustom.

If you don't do anything with it let me know. I'd love to have those quarters and tail lights!!!!

Edited April 28, 2013 by DrKerry

[BKcustoms]

Holy warpage! If anyone can fix it you can Kenn. I'll be following.

[ROB213]

I'm locked in!!

If u figure out a way to straighten that thing out, I got a few more for you to do lol.. I'm watching!

[kennb]

i have a few ideas but not sure if anything will work,,,,,i cant hurt it any more than it already is.....................

[kennb]

The glass is toast,,,,,duh,,,good guess............................. the bumpers are cast metal,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, great news,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[cobraman]

Boy, that has seen better days. I hope you can do something with it and save it. Good luck.

[kennb]

Slowly rising from the scrap yard....a little at a time....remember it took 60 years to warp,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[DrKerry]

I used a little blow torch for shrink wrapping wires to get mine to straighten out.

[mind-9]

Kenn,

Nice project this beauty has to be restored in it's original state.

How you going to make the body straigth ,i like to know (got some bend body to) sonice project to follow.

Gr

Dirk

[kennb]

I am using boiling water, clamps,,,,and a hair dryer .....You have to take it slowly too much heat will melt things down,,,,,,,,,straighten a little at a time...I will leave it as shown below over night at least,,,use the hair dryer and then leave it again for a day or so to see how it goes.............................

thanks for the feed back and comments and veiwers......................................

[DrKerry]

Lookin better already...

[kennb]

needs a lot more to make everything right but might be possible..................

[Ace-Garageguy]

Quite a challenging undertaking. Go man, go.

[John Goschke]

An admirable effort! I'll be watching to see how this turns out.

The thing about acetate is that the warpage is actually a symptom of the real problem: shrinkage. Because the plastic varies in thickness the acetate shrinks at different rates and in different directions depending on the varying stiffness of curved, angled, and flat sections, causing the unfortunate warping. In my experience having had Monogram 1/20 '55 Cadillac kits molded in acetate and the styrene-molded '56, based on the same tooling, I've noted that the typical '55 is as much as 1/4" - 3/8" shorter than the '56. Another early kit, Hawk's 1/48 scale Gee Bee racing plane was molded in acetate and styrene. The unwarped one piece wing in the acetate kit is approximately 1/4" shorter tip to tip than the styrene wing from the same mold.

It will be interesting to see if your Caddy retains its corrected shape when you're done. I sure hope so, as the body on this model is darn nice, and really captures well the character of the original. If only the original molds could be found and reshot with styrene!

[kennb]

You are right about shrinking of these old castings........There is about A 5% shrink overall judging by the metal castings of the brightwork........................I dont think it will ever come out right,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,R&R has a resin cast,,,,not sure where they got the master for it.......there might be some that did not shrink like this one but I doubt it......You are also very correct on the quality of the mold,,,,,,,even the coup de ville signature on the top of the rear quarter is beautifull.....it might be possible to make some partial molds of a few areas and assemble a full correct version..............probably could also mold it and straight out the mold so it is right.............. It is possiblle for pigs to fly,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,