On to the chassis: The scary bit was chopping the side away. The Ratio MINK is quite an old design, with the solebar and side moulded as one. The danger being that you risk spoiling the edge where it attaches to the floor resulting in a wobbly wagon. I left the part on the sprue to give me more to hang on to. Except at this moment where I'm juggling the camera as well.
With the detached solebars I made up a basic rolling chassis which needed a fair bit of fettling to get the wheels and solebars in the correct position. I used plain bearing for a change as tophats threw the whole thing out. This was going to get more than average handling so I left the brake lever for the time being. The Gibson wheels came with the Ratio kit, but at this point I noticed that there was an amount of flash on the back of the wheel-centres which was filed off with a flat needle file.
The rudimentary instructions that come with the Shire Scenes kit barely mention the ends. It occurred to me that the vent was superfluous so checked with the one existing photo. It's square on which is not helpful, but you can see inside. Why would you put vents on a semi-open vehicle after all? Filing off looked risky, but I carried on. It is possible, but the plastic is paper thin as you can see.
No comments:
Post a Comment