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building a decent jeep 40 from the old bachman toy !


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an excercise to see what can be obtained from a realy terrible model , the first sight of this model gives  the view of an apparently hopeless cause , i only got it because i baught a  bb athern gp30 and the ebay trader threw it in  and it arrived as a surprise !! so a gp30 and gp40 for £12.00p 

 

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the package

 

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first requirement was a strip down and to strip the awful factory paint  that if i'm totaly honnest looked like matt dulux emulsion applied with a roller , so it was duly stripped in mr muscle oven cleaner for 48 hours  to reveal a lot of crisp detail on the body

 

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at first handrails were made in 1mm brass stock as it was the same gauge as the plastic ones  ( wich straight away illustrated one of the problems)

 

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so they were re made in 0.5 mm brass stock

 

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next a paper pattern was made to enable chequer plate to be cut  to shape  that was then glued in place and filed to fit  neatly

 

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as i'm building this on a budget  the air tanks were cut from the handrail assembly , the awful tank representations  were cut off the body whilst retaining a body clipping area that would be covered by the tanks  once the underframe was  filed to shape  etc giving scope for better scratchbuilt fuel tanks

 

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Smart job, I've used .3mm steel model aircraft control wire with either Athearn or Smokey Valley stanchions. They're hard to bend but bombproof.

 

 

Look forward to seeing how you get on

 

Nick

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Guest 40-something

I like these jobs on budget models/toys, its always good to see what can be done

 

I'll be watching with interest!

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unsure of other ways to make the uprights  , only steel stock i found that was suitable for the upright stantions was 1mm x 1mm brass H section   so it was filed flat at the rear  and flattened and bent round the rail at the top then superglued together 

 

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OK, so I'll be the one to nitpick the Thread Title (NOT the model, which looks to be coming along pretty well).

The correct nickname for a GP locomotive is GEEP, not Jeep (when I first saw the title I though you were makng a model Willis Jeep from WWII - 1/87 Vehicle Club material!).

 

Also, I am a bit surprised you didn't go for the Cannon & Co thinwall GP35/40 cab (which most such upgraded models featured in articles did during the past 20 years), but I gather you are trying to keep costs down for the model (fair enough, it works).

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forgive my jeep thing i'm in the uk  but then the willis jeep name came from the GP designation  for general purpose !!!

anyway as you say i intend to spend little to nothing on the project , as i do on most builds , prefering to scratch build , as such the cab is a fair representation so it stops!!!

besides being in the uk and working long hours i don't wish to spend the time and effort  involved to source the parts like that it eats into my little time at home to actualy model

although the thaught was good and apreciated so maybe on another build !!

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forgive my jeep thing i'm in the uk  but then the willis jeep name came from the GP designation  for general purpose !!!

Hold on there:

 

Many explanations of the origin of the word jeep have proven difficult to verify. The most widely-held theory is that the military designation GP (for Government Purposes or General Purpose) was slurred into the word Jeep in the same way that the contemporary HMMWV (for High-Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle) has become known as the humvee.

An alternative view launched by R. Lee Ermey, on his television series Mail Call, disputes this, saying that the vehicle was designed for specific duties, and was never referred to as "General Purpose" and it is highly unlikely that the average jeep-driving GI would have been familiar with this designation. The Ford GPW abbreviation actually meant G for government use, P to designate its 80-inch (2,000 mm) wheelbase and W to indicate its Willys-Overland designed engine. Ermey suggests that soldiers at the time were so impressed with the new vehicles that they informally named it after Eugene the Jeep, a character in the Popeye cartoons created by E. C. Segar. Eugene the Jeep was Popeye's "jungle pet" and was "small, able to move between dimensions and could solve seemingly impossible problems.

 

Apparently this will be debated until the heat-death of the universe, so don't feel bad.

anyway as you say i intend to spend little to nothing on the project , as i do on most builds , prefering to scratch build , as such the cab is a fair representation so it stops!!!

 

I've been a modeler since the 1980s, and I recall when the Cannon thin-wall cabs (and other detail parts) came out they were such an improvement over the standard "thick" cabs that they quickly became the standard for any kitbasher (you can tell this by the mentions in then contemporary modeling articles). Eventually over the years mass manufacturing caught up (more or less), but still Cannon cabs are sort of burned into my sub-conscious

 

BTW, I DON'T evny you the job of filling, fitting, and bending all those Stanchions - Smokey Valley is generally the way to go...

 

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One thing that does strike me about the stripped shell is the quality of the moulding - it's pretty good for what was sold as a toy.

The cab headlights even feature the shades to stop the light shining on the cab windows and affecting the crew's view. Not all roads had them but I don't recall any other manufacturer putting them on a model.

 

Nick

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Hold on there:

 

 

 

 

I've been a modeler since the 1980s, and I recall when the Cannon thin-wall cabs (and other detail parts) came out they were such an improvement over the standard "thick" cabs that they quickly became the standard for any kitbasher (you can tell this by the mentions in then contemporary modeling articles). Eventually over the years mass manufacturing caught up (more or less), but still Cannon cabs are sort of burned into my sub-conscious

 

BTW, I DON'T evny you the job of filling, fitting, and bending all those Stanchions - Smokey Valley is generally the way to go...

 

 

  thing is  that you buy a part here a part there and it soon clocks up into quite a spend  before including searching for what you want  then waiting for it in the post , scratch building costs a couple of pennies  , hones modelling skills  and instead of waiting for delivery and ordering i can be building instead  wich if you look on it, it is only a little longer as you would still have to  fettle and fit kit baught items

 

obviously there are some items worth buying that are harder to make like plows etc  but  i'll usualy work out how far i want to go beforehand  and as most of my american locos will be mostly display only with a rare run  you have to work out a realistic budget as at the end of the day it is still only going to have the aincent Bachmann pancake motor chassis !!

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One thing that does strike me about the stripped shell is the quality of the moulding - it's pretty good for what was sold as a toy.

The cab headlights even feature the shades to stop the light shining on the cab windows and affecting the crew's view. Not all roads had them but I don't recall any other manufacturer putting them on a model.

 

Nick

  unsurew of wich ones do or don't i know my blue box athearn SDP40 has them as does an old bachman SD40-2 but then the Bachmann  gp 30 i have doesn't as doesn't an athearn blue box gp 30  so it may depend on company order specs  

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obviously there are some items worth buying that are harder to make like plows etc  but  i'll usualy work out how far i want to go beforehand  and as most of my american locos will be mostly display only with a rare run  you have to work out a realistic budget as at the end of the day it is still only going to have the ancient Bachmann pancake motor chassis !!

 

 

Dunno about this item, but my old Bachmann GP40 [bought early-mid 1980's.....2nd hand!]....was /is [i still have it]....8-wheel drive, centre motor...

 

PAncake US jobbies tended to be something like ex-LIma.... [Alco 420,for example, probably from Pemco....I have a couple, not impressed]...

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Dunno about this item, but my old Bachmann GP40 [bought early-mid 1980's.....2nd hand!]....was /is [i still have it]....8-wheel drive, centre motor...

 

PAncake US jobbies tended to be something like ex-LIma.... [Alco 420,for example, probably from Pemco....I have a couple, not impressed]...

i think this model dates to late 70's early 80's  pancake motor is nothing like limas   it is more like the motor  mainline fitted into thier peak diesels  abysmal effort !!!  so this is striktly a displayer it may get a cheap dcc conversion so i can run on my planned british outline layout and so i can fit fibre optics later in the build

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I suspect it depends on which photo the mould maker had in front of him.

 

The build is coming along nicely - way faster than anything I do! Which roadname are you painting it for?

 

Nick

that will be revealed at a later date !! a lot depends on if i can obtain the required decals from a suplier in this country , all i'll say is it will be unusual and intresting  and also being done to practice some weathering techniques !!

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thing is  that you buy a part here a part there and it soon clocks up into quite a spend  before including searching for what you want

 

Very true - and as an excercise in keeping costs down this is great. I'd echo the fascination in seeing the plastic not covered in such a horrible coat of paint too!

 

In practical terms if your objective was to get a loco to actually use, you can pick up examples of the superb Atlas model for under £50, provided you're ( a ) patient and ( b ) not overly picky about roadnames.

 

5 or 6 years ago I picked up an old Atlas (Roco) GP40 for a tenner with the intention of upgrading, but worked out that by the time i'd bought all the parts I wanted to use it was cheaper to bin it and buy the new model...

 

Cest la vie.

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