Hornby MK3 RFM badly bowed

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

Has anyone else taken a Hornby Mk3 RFM "four window" buffet car apart and found it's banana shaped with the centre of the coach shell higher than the outer ends? This coach is a rehash of the Lima Mk3 buffet rather than a scale length Hornby one, it dismantles the same as a Lima one albeit with a bit more effort needed but rather suspiciously the roof section has a cross-ways strengthener every centimeter or so suggesting that they have strengthened the roof in order to hold the bodyshell up to keep the coach in shape after stuffing up the bodyshell moulding somehow. This renders it useless as a source vehicle to become a HST TRSB 404xx series vehicle as I'd planned to use the roof from a Lima trailer and add the roof vents in the correct place for a TRSB rather than make do/hack about trying to make the RFM ones do that job.

 

I have the shell upturned on a flat surface with a heavy box pressing down at each end to try and "iron" it flat but I'm not optimistic.

 

any thoughts?!

 

 

[dale159]

I had a Virgin 'Pretendolino' liveried one apart a few years back for a respray. Can't say I noticed anything untoward, certainly runs OK with some Mk2 aircons all fitted with Kadee #5s.

 

What livery is yours?

 

Dale

[tractor_37260]

> > I have the shell upturned on a flat surface with a heavy box pressing down at each end to try and "iron" it flat but I'm not optimistic.

 

It's unlikely you'll manage to get it fully straight again, but some heat applied at the middle may help, when it's held down...........

Edited January 27, 2020 by tractor_37260
update text

[kevinlms]

13 hours ago, tractor_37260 said:

> > I have the shell upturned on a flat surface with a heavy box pressing down at each end to try and "iron" it flat but I'm not optimistic.

 

It's unlikely you'll manage to get it fully straight again, but some heat applied at the middle may help, when it's held down...........

Perhaps very hot water rather than heat?

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

I was thinking of trying some gentle hair dryer level of heat to try and solve the issue, just get it nicely warm but not melty. It's a Virgin (original/'kit-kat') livery one #10235 in case anyone is in the same boat.

 

Plan B (well actually about plan F!) is to use more of the roof from the Lima donor vehicle by retaining the vestibule end drop-lights and strengthening the Lima rood a bit within the roof cavity so that the vestibule drop lights are effectively 'pinning' the ends of the roof down and the roof mates with the Limby body shell along the whole length. I did wish to plug and fill three windows on the kitchen side so I could do with it being straight-ish before that process is carried out otherwise the window I'm plugging and the final resting shape of the body may not be the same!

 

 

[Pete the Elaner]

If you just wanted to add the roof vents, Southern Pride models make them, along with several other detailing components for Lima/Hornby Mk3s.

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

I've still got some Hurst roof vents (remember them?!) which I didn't use at the time and I can recover the ones I did use from the Hurst overlay conversion I did at the time because I didn't (and still dont!) know how to evenly bend nearly a foot long piece of thin metal to deal with the solebar profile on the Mk3. Using a spare Lima non-caterer roof if the best starting point as it saves having to hack off the roof vents from a caterer and somehow get the ribbed roofline back in.

 

Thanks for reminding me about Southern Pride though, built three of their TPO vans about 25 years ago and STILL reckon they turned out better than a Bachmann one does now with a £50 price tag!