blubaja Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 Picked this up this weekend. I'm so glad it was reissued. As I'm not old enough to have known the original, just from pics. Very awesome kit! Great design of the 1:1 also. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vince Nemanic Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 I'm starting to build this, so I thought I might address some of the questions about fit. As a disclaimer, these maybe peculiar to my kit. I also dechromed a number of parts such as the front suspension and shocks. Of course, there are mold lines and ejector pin marks to deal with. I found that is VERY important to remove these and to test fit a LOT. some of the ejector pins are raised from the surface of a part and cause alignment problems. The most puzzling problem is that a lot of the locating pins are too long (or the holes are too shallow). It is probably easier to drill out the holes. If you don't fix these on the engine it will probably be a misaligned mess. I had to drill almost every mounting hole on the engine, and sand own the semicircular piston barrel mounts. Incidentally, the engine has nothing in common with the Corvair units in the following kits that I have: 69 Corvair; Astro I, or Meyers Tow'd. The AMT guys really liked redesigning Corvair engines! There is no precise mounting method for the upper part of the chassis pan. I puzzled over this for a few days. What I finally came up with is to sandwich the floor pan, upper floor pan, and upper body together. The upper pan still could move around a bit, but it helped me position it some. I still have the upper pan a bit crooked, but I think it is about .020 inch tone side. It probably would have been much further off if I hadn't sandwiched it. If anyone has a better way, let us know. I did check that the engine will install correctly with the pan parts clued together, but do not glue in the brace above the transmission. I'm currently working on the roof and doors. I found that the lower edge of both doors need to have their corners reshaped slightly to match the openings in the body- this took about 30 seconds for each corner. There was a lot wrong with the drivers side of the roof. First, the front corner of it curves downward, which creates a much larger gap than the passenger side has (that side fit perfectly), and it does not meet the corner if the door opening by about .030 inch. I had to sand down the front edge of the roof from just behind the front mounting pin to the front edge of the roof. I think s piece of sheet plastic needs to be put on the front of the roof to reach the door opening, but I have not done this yet. I am expecting to need to shim the door openings once the roof is mounted. I also found that the windshield will mount with the roof glued on. Yes, I am planning to paint the model after the roof is on. There are a few sink marks on the body top and pan which will nee to be addressed. For those of you who, like me, want to do the race car or a "standard" Piranha, make sure you read the website I referenced earlier and look at all of the sections. The rear if the body is not the only difference! You also will need an engine swap. I'm not knocking the model. It was one my holiest grails, and is pretty well engineered for its day. This build is meant to be a test run of sorts as I m planning to do more. Most of then above faults only take a few minutes to fix and are minor compared to most kits with opening doors and 60s engineering (e.g. the Henry J). Good luck with your kit and I hope that this helped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snake45 Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 Very nice writeup, Vince. Thanks for taking the time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vince Nemanic Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 The above should read "sand DOWN the ENDS of the piston barrel mounts" . I thought I caught all of the mistakes before I hit post. LOL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gtx6970 Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 (edited) looks like that third one is a different iteration than the first two pics, note the rear view mirror up on a tripod and a change to some less ridiculous tires front and rear. almost looks nice I would say jb to me it looks like all 3 are different from one another. top and bottom one have different exhaust tips. and the middle one has different air cleaner and/or exhaust poking up thru the rear deck ps, this kit wasnt even on my radar,,till I saw this picture.I might just have to build one of them just for giggles Edited April 22, 2015 by gtx6970 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Art Anderson Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 By comparison both of these kits/ cars seem rather small/ tiny looking at other kits Well, it wasn't a very big car in 1:1 either. Art Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Hamilton Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 For the last couple of days, Decades TV has been running episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Yesterday, they ran the episodes with the spy car. I did not see all of them, but I have a pretty good idea of what it looked like on the show. Personally, I feel that they could have had a better car for their work, as it was awfully small, and they had to open the gull wing doors to shoot out of it. Nice looking car though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krazy Rick Posted April 22, 2015 Share Posted April 22, 2015 For the last couple of days, Decades TV has been running episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Yesterday, they ran the episodes with the spy car. I did not see all of them, but I have a pretty good idea of what it looked like on the show. Personally, I feel that they could have had a better car for their work, as it was awfully small, and they had to open the gull wing doors to shoot out of it. Nice looking car though. I could never get past that "door / rocket thing" either ...... not the best well thought out engineering - actually really, really stupid Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lordairgtar Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 There is a nice photo etch kit by Paragrafix that you should definately get to build the Spy car. Also use the engine from AMT parts pack and a 69 Corvair, much more accurate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Ellis Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 UNCLE car was probably a 140hp car. Had 4 carbs, no turbo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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