Model RR Shows - Let the Buyer Beware

Like many modelers, I often pickup kits at shows from unknown vendors, with the idea that a good deal is a good deal no matter what.  I'll stick the kit on my modeling shelf and decide to build them at a later date.  So it was with a Walthers logging truck that I had purchased years ago, as these kits have become harder to find and have been sold out at the local hobby stores for some time.  Imagine my surprise when I opened the kit, only to find that the cab had already been painted.  Well not a huge problem, I started to look it over and realized that the previous owner had actually substituted a different cab than was present in the original kit.  The first tip off was that the cab was painted and the second that it was actually a solid block of resin and actually a copy of Mack truck cab.  This was not going to be a kit which was easily put together.

The cab on the left is the cab usually provided from the Walthers kit, one that I had previously started and was just at the final assembly stage.  The cab on the right is the solid block of resin I unknowingly purchased, although I do admit that the details of the wipers, air filter, etc are quite good.  It's just the space behind the fenders and inside the cab are solid blocks of resin. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo until starting to remove the area beneath the fenders.

Here's the view after most of the fender area has been cleaned out.  I drilled a series of small diameter holes along the underside of the fender to start the process and then used a 0.25 in bit to remove the large block of material. Afterwards, I sanded the area smooth and then glued a small block of styrene in the middle to hold the wheel axle.  One word of caution. I don't know what type of resin was used but while trying to remove the resin I noticed that I was smelling a very sickly sweet chemical smell and therefore donned my half face respirator to be safe.  I think that during the heat from drilling it released the odor and it was annoying enough that I could smell it even after finishing my work.  Subsequent sanding was done in the out of doors.

While I thought about trying to remove the solid resin inside the cab, I opted that I could never get the walls thin enough to be realistic, and therefore would try another route.  That was to use the separate truck frame and remove the pre-molded seat and dashboard.  So it was back to the Dremel tool, sand paper and chisels.  I'm never going to be totally satisfied with the way this cab looks, so this truck has been sent to the back of the layout in an area which is heavily treed, and enough shows to depict a log truck coming into the saw mill with a load.

So lesson learned. Next time I fully inspect the packages contents even if the package is sealed with some tape. Who knows when this cab was switched.