Built
with Die Cast body and Kato chassis
009 Morris J Rail-Van
4 mm scale
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| © 2020 David Hurst All Rights Reserved |
Hunting through the internet on my
prolonged absences from work April 2020, I came across an Oxford Classix Morris
J Van for sale on eBay, as this was for a very reasonable price and I had an idea for a small service van on a backwater railway, I bought it.
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© 2020 David Hurst All
Rights Reserved
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Having received my van and dismantled it, I
took a Kato 11-109 chassis and had a go fitting this into the body shell. The
major alterations to the chassis had to be done to the front part of the
unit, some metal had to be removed, this allowed it to sit in the right
alignment to the wheel arches. To do this bit of cutting, I removed the plastic
shell from the chassis and cut the front off using a cutting disk in a mini
drill. One thing to observe when doing this the metal chassis is in two
electricity isolated halves, so when the cutting is done make sure that there
are no little bits of metalwork still bridging the gap between the two. This
will cause a short circuit.
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© 2020 David Hurst All
Rights Reserved
|
I then carefully removed just over half of
the metalwork which held the plastic floor pan and wheels in place at each end
of the inner body shell. This allowed the chassis to sit far enough into the
body to place the centres of the wheels at the bottom line of the bodywork.
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© 2020 David Hurst All
Rights Reserved
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I then cut off the front and rear mudguards
from the floor pan, which was a tricky job on the front ones as I did this by
keeping the front part of the floor pan connecting them together, this made it
much easier to line them up when fitted. These were glued to the metal bodywork
with a little super glue, I did remove the paint from the wheel arches on the body first. The
inside of the rear ones were made flush with the inner body, but the front ones
I left to overhanging a bit and cut back the chassis to suit.
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© 2020 David Hurst All
Rights Reserved
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The chassis needed trimming at both sides
mainly at the front to squeeze into place. Once this was lined up I drilled a
series of holes to suit 1 mm soft steel wire and formed some side rails and a
front and rear bumper rail, and that was it, a relativity quick fix with no
painting or finishing needed, though I will probably give it a coat of matt
varnish and a bit of weathering.
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| © 2020 David Hurst All Rights Reserved |
The little van is a good weight because of the
metal body and runs very well with the new style Kato chassis.
