In the 11th hour, this ’63 Buick Riviera was saved from the crusher. Here’s how….
I have to start off with apologies for not taking better pictures; I suppose I embarked on this project with so little confidence of success that it didn’t occur to me to take any “before” pictures, and that’s a shame, since I have just accomplished something that, to me, is really exciting: I have saved a Thunderjet body with a completely destroyed screw post! Until I did it, I didn’t believe it was possible!
I bought this white Buick Riviera back in early 2020; it was the very first original vintage Aurora body I bought after starting my journey into the rediscovered slot car hobby. I bought it partly because I love Buick Rivieras, but mainly because I was able to get it cheap, and the reason for that was obvious: the front screw post was badly cracked; it had a fissure that ran almost halfway up the post. I think I got it for something like $15. It wouldn’t be that cheap now, but back then (way back in the day, almost 2 years ago!) these old T-Jets weren’t getting the prices they are now, especially considering this particular body is commonly found in white.
I originally mounted it on an early Auto World T-Jet 500 chassis without a traction magnet just to run around the track with the few originals I had back then, but I never had much interest in this format since I was still building by Ultra-G racing fleets, so it mostly sat around unused. About 6 months ago I had occasion to take it apart for some reason, and I had honestly forgotten the condition of the screw post; when I unscrewed the front screw, the whole side of the of the post sheared off, leaving a big chunk of plastic missing from it. “Well, that’s all she wrote,” I thought, and tossed it into my junk pile.
Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago, when I was going through said junk pile looking for original Aurora chassis parts to salvage; I came across this body again and, right before pitching it into the trash can, I decided to scrap it in the best “waste not, want not” style, so I sat down with some needlenosers and a pick tool to carefully pry the front and rear bumpers and the window insert out of it before tossing the body into the round file. Then I stopped, and thought…
”Now, here is an opportunity: I have a body that I’m so sure is a goner that I’m going to scrap it and throw it away, but, hey, it’s a Riviera; it probably can’t be saved, but what’s the harm in trying?”
I’ve written at length on this blog about the dangers of cracked screw posts, and for 2 years I’ve been convinced that damage like this was irrepairable; I have found some methods to stave off further damage when a post is cracked, but when a piece of it is broken off? No such luck. But I thought I’d look again, and this time, I found someone on the web describing something that I’d missed before: a blurb in which someone described how they had replaced a screw post by using a piece of styrene tubing. Hmmmm…interesting…and where would one find styrene tubing of just the right inside and outside diameter?
Enter Evergreen Scale Models!
https://evergreenscalemodels.com/
Every dioramist out there should bookmark this site; their wares are invaluable to those of us trying to scratch build scenery, but even if you have heard of them, you may not have realized they have a product that can give new life to a T-Jet with a broken screw post!
So it was encouraging to find this material, but now a new challenge arose: how was I to cut the old screw post out of the car in such a way that I was left with a flush, clean mounting surface for my new post, but without damaging the rest of the body? I’m working in a recessed area with not much more than an inch of leeway.
Naturally my first thought was my Dremel, but no cutting wheel I have is small enough to work in such a small space. I did a web search and found a few places selling jeweler’s saw attachments that looked like they might work, but they were expensive; a trip to the local hardware stores didn’t produce any better options for the Dremel, but even if I’d found one, I was worried about trying to use it for such a delicate operation: what if I slipped and hit the body? It would only take once! I eventually decided to try cutting by hand, and to do so I chose a package of fine-tooth metal cutting saw blades designed for a scroll saw. In retrospect this might not have been the best choice-I’m now thinking a tiny saw on the Dremel might have been the best tool after all-but I got them cheap, and since, again, I didn’t have a high confidence of success, I gave it try.
I actually did nick the fender wells with the saw in spite of how careful I was, but since I was doing it by hand the damage was minimal; it took a while since I had to move slowly to keep the blade from jamming in the plastic, and to not put enough pressure on the post to crack it off unevenly, but eventually I had a good “stub” to mount too. A quick hit with the griding stone on the Dremel cleaned it off and evened it out. So far so good!
Next step: I cut a length of tubing a little longer than the chunk of the screw post I’d cut off, and this point is key to success: if your first thought is to try to glue your new post to the body, don’t! That was my first thought too, but the chances of positioning the post wrong are high; there is a better way, and I hit upon it before it was too late: instead of attaching the new tube to the body, I attached it to the chassis; I ran the front screw into the tube to cut the threads into it and to make sure it would accept the screw without cracking. Once the length of styrene tubing was attached to the front screw, I inserted the rear screw into the body and mounted the body on the chassis to check for fit and positioning.
The post was a little long, so I had to use the Dremel to carefully grind it down, making sure to keep the surface even, but once I had the height just right, I loaded a generous blob of super glue on the stub on the body where the original screw had been and mounted it, setting the rear screw all the way down as if I were doing a final assembly. And then….I walked away and left it until the following day, to give the super glue the chance to cure completely.
The car looked great! I put it on the track and it ran great. Thing is, I didn’t really doubt that it would; I figured the glue would hold running the car around the track at low speed. But now, the moment of truth: could I unscrew the body from the chassis and separate them, and then reattach them, without my new fabricated post breaking off?
YES!!! It held! And here is the proof:
Once the car was reassembled again, I put it back on the track and was a little rougher with it, allowing myself a few spinouts and crashes into the guard rails to see if it would hold. It did…and weeks later, its still holding now!
I AM STOKED!!! All this time I thought a broken screw post was a death knell for a T-Jet, and now it turns out that there is a way to save them even with this kind of damage! This opens up new possibilities for picking up junker bodies on the cheap; while they may never have high collectible value, it does mean that salvaging some of the most damaged bodies is possible…and I get a lot of satisfaction out of saving cars from the ignoble fate of the crusher, no matter the scale they are!
Now, pardon me while I take my cool classic Riviera for a cruise!
Wow, this is amazing and an awesome job! That is a really cleaver solution to the problem and I have no doubt will be very useful in the future. It would have been a shame to loose this beauty. I like the thought process and I’ve been trying to do the same thing: see a problem, investigate, think on it, and try a solution. I’ve rushed many things that didn’t have a happy ending! Great Job!!!!