I picke dup a set of nice Con-Cor gons on eBay, but the person who built them took a few shortcuts, worst one is the weight has not been secured. I have the original instructions so I know where the pieces go together, but I need some way of dissolving or gently breakign the glue joints so I can take them apart and then reassemble them. Any ideas? I’ve tried a hobby knife in oen of the gaps and gently prying with no result, and I think I was putting on about as much pressure as possible without breakign anything.
Glue joints in plastic can be tricky to open up again, and may not come out well. The best method I’ve found is to scratch a groove around the joint, on the side not visible, with a modeller’s knife (which it sounds like you’ve already done) and carefully apply some liquid plastic glue to the area. As soon as you put the glue bottle down, gently try to work the joint open. It may weaken, which means you need to apply more glue to dissolve the joint.
What I use for a glue applicator, both for assembly and this type work, is a fine tube A-West bottle. It helps you control the amount and point of application better than any other method I’ve found. But like I said, it may or may not come out well. Good luck.
Worth a try. The tough part is it’s a gon. The side and ends and a false floor are all one pice, the piece I have to remove to get to the weights is the actual floor which is glued down on top of that. Hard to pry and lift.
I also have to find a way to chop off the truck retainign pins, they got glued in on 2 of the 3 models, and on those two something’s not right with the bolsters, the cars sit way too high. The third one they weren’t glued in and one even fell off in shipping, pin nowhere to be found. On that one I’m just goign to glue in a sprue scrap, cut it off flush, and tap for a screw and screw the trucks on. I think if I pull down on the others there’s enough room to slip in a single-edge razor blade to slice the pin off.
This does work with some glue. But a freezer attached to your fridge isn’t cold enough. If you have a deep freeze that goes down to -25C that could be cold enough depending on the glue.
If the car looks good, why not give it some sort of load that adds the weight? “Scrap Iron” or something like that. Then you can hide the weight as part of the load.
I don’t need to add weight, I need to glue the included weight so it doesn’t rock around. I guess it doesn’t hurt anything, but it’s annoying that a dab or two of CA wasn’t used during the original assembly (not by me - I always glue my egiths, and paint them even i they can;t be seen), and every time I pick one of these cars up it slides around. If I could find another set, especially unbuilt, I’d go for it - actually there is another set with 3 different numbers I think. These are old ConCor models that were a special run for the RCT&HS and while not 100% accurate they are ‘close enough’ for me.
In that case, why not drill a couple of small holes through the floor or the undercarriage where you know the weights will be. Pump some glue or putty up in there and then plug the holes and repaint them? You could make them look like patches or something like that…?
I did disassemble a plastic kit once by packing it in a box filled with dry ice to really cool it down. It worked, but you have to be very cautious not to touch the parts without wearing cloves. The plastic also turns very brittle and can easily be broken, not only at the joints.
Which ever way you choose, disassembling is not easy and will most likely end up in destroying the part.
A long long time ago, someone told me that nail polish remover worked well for dissolving crazy glue (CA) I’ve never had the need to try it. I would suspect that it will also disolve the paint and may not be too kind to the plastic. As for securing the weights the suggestion of drilling a couple holes and inserting glue sounds like the best course of action, and cutting the truck pins to install screws works fine. Note: using long enough screws may also capture the weights.