Devastating Diecast Moment
Has anyone else had a horrible moment as a diecast custom builder? I was getting around to packaging up my entries to mail them out to a tournament and my clumsy self accidentally allowed two of my entries to roll off my counter and they fell resulting in them being damaged (One car had a bent wheel and the other had a bunch of paint chipped up real bad.) I put in all that work to make a nice custom and I ruined it by being careless. Quite the feeling of defeat and now I am scrambling around to try to put together another car so I can get them sent out before the tournaments deadline! I thought I'd just share my detestation on here thinking maybe I'm not alone in my sadness!
Discussion
I recently build my first tube axle car to send to Flips for his Pinks race. As I was testing, I dropped it to the floor and bent the axles. (crap!) Those pins bent a lot easier that real axles I guess. Still trying to find time to fix it. I'm backed up with other builds at the moment. Lesson learned...
-Z-
- I've never tried tuned axels? Are they better than FTEs or Polished axels? — Honeycreek_Diecast
- Not sure. This was my first try. The pins are nickel plated so they should be equivalent to FTEs — Zamak_Speed_Shop
- I bought some nickel plated steels that when I cut is, they were brass. checked my order steel...amazon sub'd! — dr_dodge
Oh boy. Drop a car and it makes just the wrong sound. Yes I have.
- Yeah I heard them start to roll and couldn't scramble fast enough to get to them, it happened in like slow motion haha — Honeycreek_Diecast
Many, many moments. Orange peeling the paint when spraying on clear coat after all the decals were meticulously applied, over-sanding a flat spot into wheels, having the weight break loose in the car because I didn't secure it correctly, mixing up the weight requirements when I signed up multiple races then having to tear the cars apart and reconfigure them to the right weight requirements the day before mailing, finding a good set of wheels that fit perfectly and losing them, bending the axle on a great set of wheels when trying to set it in place, bending the axle on a great set of wheels when trying to harvest it...Anything that can go wrong will go wrong when you hurry.
From leaving fingerprints in paint not cured to glue leaking along the axels to having a newly finished car bounce off the floor...we've all been there bud
Here is a tip. I shared on redline many months is a tip. I use old small pieces of orange track with some hot glue on each end to keep cars from rolling off of the track piece. As you can see in the pics below on my cluttered bench not a single car is actually on the work mat. They are all on pieces of orange track safely off the messy bench and not able to roll anywhere.
Sorry say Welcome to the Accident League, I dipped a car Three times from dropping twice and the third time the Paint melted from too much Clear coat at once.
Yup that's happened to me a few times now! I'm guilty of having a messy workspace, so bumping a car and it rolling off my desk. Shame they don't bounce!
I dropped the IndyCar I sent to Boss Championship Racing, it actually advanced to the second round despite landing directly on one of its wheels.
Another time I spent a ton of time polishing a perfectly-fitting axle for my Hot Nuts Diecast Top Fuel entry and the JB weld got into it when I glued the axles together. I had to scramble and use an off-color front axle that had smaller wheels than I wanted since I was going away that week and I wanted to send it out before I left..
The worst of the worst though, was for Crazy Canuck's Gasland tournament, I had spent hours putting together this firetruck/giant dragon Frankenstein abomination, I had weighed both castings and they were under the weight limit; didn't add any weights as a 7g wheel weight would put me over. The JB Weld added so much weight, that it was 10 grams over when it was said and done. I shaved so much metal off with a bench grinder but that didn't even put a dent in it. I ended up sending the "$lambulance" which I now use to push the cars that DNF in my videos into the junkyard. The dragon was later used in the Junkyard Joust, with some LEGO modifications of course.
Uuggghhh!