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I'd been looking out for a reasonably priced 1:12 scale Kyosho model for quite a while, and finally managed to grab one on eBay for £160. It was pretty dirty, so I stripped it down and popped the various parts into my ultrasonic cleaner.
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I tried to carefully pull off the glued-on seat belts so that I could remove the seats, but they ripped - so I've ordered some 4mm black ribbon to make new ones. As you can see, the seat belt guide and headrest also came off the LH seat, so they need to be glued back on! Interestingly the "glass" also fell out of one of the door mirrors - just like real life!
This was what was left in my ultrasonic cleaner afterwards:
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It all cleaned up nicely - the interior and the hood now look like new. I then had to set about fixing the hood, as the interior mechanism is just as complicated as the life size one, and very fiddly to work on. For some reason Kyosho based the rear window on a clear PVC rather than a solid glass one, and it had creased and was preventing the hood from folding down properly. I managed to repair the mechanism - it could do with a bit more work, but my main interest was in getting it to fold down properly, as I'll probably never put it up again!
I noticed that one of the two bonnet struts was incomplete, so I've ordered some very thin brass tube to make a new one.
I recently invested in a resin printer (much higher resolution than my FDM printer), so I was thinking about converting it to RHD as I did with my cheap 1:12 scale one (see
this thread). However, a) it's much more work as I'd also have to move the pedals (which the cheap car doesn't have!), and b) I couldn't see how to get the dashboard out - it must be glued rather than screwed in.
Now all I need to do is to put it all back together - and I'll be keeping it in a glass cabinet to avoid having to do all this again!
