Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Wonderful chassis fitting

Chassis fitting

The Peco chassis locates in the base of a Peco wagon kit with the aid of a lots of spigots sticking up in to the floor. Obviously the Dapol body doesn't have these so I carefully measured and drilled the 1.5 and 2mm holes required.

It was a couple of hours later I realised that the card packing included a full-sized template to aid the modeller.

Anyway, along the sides, I cut the spigots short so the holes didn't need to be drilled all the way through the surprisingly thick floor. There are some holes for the W-irons and bufferbeam unit.

By the time this kit was produced, the moulds were obviously getting worn. One of the buffer shanks had to be drilled out (1.5mm bit) and there was some cleaning up to do with a sharp knife - not easy as the material is rubbery. I think the kit has been re-tooled as I'm sure I've built one with metal rather than plastic buffers which do spring properly.

Everything was stuck in place with superglue - normal plastic solvent won't hack it here. Nylon bearings and Bachmann wheels are fitted. The axles needed some of the pinpoint filing off the ends as they are a bit long for this kit. I wonder if Peco axles are slightly shorter?

Chassis fitted

2 comments:

James Finister said...

I'm not convinced there actually was a yellow Cadbury open of this type. The only photo I've seen looks like it has been edited pretty primitively. i suspect it might have been a bog standard works photo altered to show what a Cadbury livery might look like

Paul B. said...

Peco axles are indeed shorter, and if I could find the set that came with my half-finished tank wagon I'll measure some and report back.
Using the same length axles as everyone else would presumably have been too easy for the boys in Beer...