My Model Collection Is Toast!

Ouch! Cleaning those will look like fun!

I need to detail most of my 1/18 cars as well.

 

A can of compressed air...
A mini keyboard vaccum...
A box of Q-tips...
A bottle of Mothers Wax...

SEVERAL hours of cleaning...

Enjoy the view!!

 

Yeah, thats what i was thinking. These definatley aren't "toast"

 

If it is any consolation to you: My 1/18 collection is stored on glass shelves. TWICE have they come down with me standing nearby watching the glass shelves at the top come down in domino style taking everything with them. I ended up twice with lots of broken glass and lots of broken models.

But Crazy Glue can fix anything!


Just be careful with clear plastic parts, use regular plastic glue for those.

Meanwhile I have learned to use putty for the sprockets of my shelves so they won't come down anymore...

 

you can also buy some cans of DUST OFF at a camera shop

that sux,

Good luck

BTW, nice collection

 

Models on the bed! I do the same thing whenever I've got to move them, modify/repair their storage cabinet, etc. My guestbed looks almost just like that, but with fewer models...

My 328 has had the exact same problems as well - broken mirrors. I'll get around to repairing it one of these days, but for now it lives on the top shelf of one of my closets along with some unopened models.

That's quite a dusty mess you've got there. I think the can of compressed air is a good idea. Just be patient - it's gonna take a loooooong time to clean all those. I'd say do maybe 4-5 in one sitting, and then walk away and do something else for a while. Trying to do all of those at once will likely cause you to rush and either be sloppy, damage the models further, and so on.

Best of luck!

 

Sorry to see your collection in such a shape Vasco.

If you'd like, to ease your pain I'll take the entire collection off your hands, say 100$. You know, out of sight, out of mind

 

you need Zymol

 

Really, it's only about an hour and a quarter. If I push the car hard, I can make it to your location in less than an hour. I'll even buy the espressos before picking up my new collection.

 

Sounds good Vasco!

 

$200.

 

Uh-oh...I've created a monster...

 

$300.

 

$301....

 

they look like barn finds now

 

try with water.

in bathroom put water and one car inside . stay 5 m it will be ok
(only for burago models)


kyosho and anson or anthing else don 't try!

 

A tip that might be helpful to keep repaired mirrors more permanently attached to the car: I've had lots of Kyosho and some AutoArts with broken off sideview mirrors. As you say the Kyoshos, which are quite true to scale, end up being quite fragile. I've attempted to just superglue them back on in the past, but found the joint just wasn't very strong. A light nudge and they'd be off again. In addition to that, I was never very happy with the look, because the gap at the break was always noticeable. I started to think about how to repair it better, and came up with this method. Get some micro-drills, say numbers 67 to 78 counting by twos (these are very small, .032 to .016 in dia). I use the ones with a small collar found in the electronics industry for drilling circuit boards. You can get resharpened on eBay in sets of 20 to 50 for $10 to $20.

Find some solid wire. I save the clear insulated solid wire that is used to secure toys to their cardboard packages (if you have kids you know what I'm talking about). These come in varying thicknesses. Strip off the clear insulation and choose a thickness that is about 1/3 to 1/2 of the diameter of your mirror stalk. Find the an appropriate sized drill bit that is the closest match to this wire and carefully drill a small hole about 1/8" to 3/16" deep in the center of the broken end of the mirror stalk. Do the same for the part still attached to the car. Test fit the wire into the both holes you just drilled. You want a snug fit - not too loose. If it's way too hard to insert the wire all the way in, enlarge both holes with the next largest size drill bit. Trim off a bit more than 1/4 in of the wire and insert this into the hole in the end of the mirror. Test fit this into the hole in the car body. If you did a good job drilling the holes as close to the center point as possible, the two pieces should line up almost perfectly. Once you are satisfied with the fit, pull out the wire, put on a SMALL amount of superglue (I find the thin stuff works best for this application) on one end, insert it into the mirror stalk. Give it a 15 to 30 seconds to set, test fit it again into the hole in the car body. The wire is strong but can be bent slightly to adjust the angle and position of the mirror. Remove from the car, do the same thing with the superglue on the remaining free end of the wire, insert firmly into the hole in the car, quickly adjust to set final position, and leave alone to cure. The final repair will be very strong, usually stronger than the stock mirror, and most of the repairs I've done this way are almost un-noticeable.

Again, I must stress to use as little superglue as possible, otherwise you'll have a small mess of glue to clean up. I just dip the end of the wire I'm gluing in the tip of the superglue bottle. The film left on is almost invisible to the eye. You can always reglue if necessary but cleaning off excess glue is an exercise you do not want to have to do.

YMMV.

DYW