So I recently got this Little Red Wagon by JL through a HWEP and the little truck already got a spotlight on Mopar Monday. If you missed the post, you can check it out here:
http://liveandletdiecast.kinja.com/mopar-monday-t…
This truck however, is actually my resto/custom project. You see, the truck originally didn’t look this good when it showed up in my mailbox. The car wasn’t able to roll and the engine that supposed to sit in the bed was missing. This is what it looked like when I took it out the envelope:
The front wheels sag and where the big block suppose to be lies an empty space
I was informed that the Little Red Wagon was a DIY kit, which was good news because it means taking it apart would be easy with only one screw holding it together.
After taking it apart, I decided to tackle the issue of the wheels not rolling. There were 2 small plates that keep the axles in the groove but after 20 minutes of fiddling the position, I realized they do absolutely nothing because the groove was molded too tall giving the axles too much room to move around no matter what you do. I know just the thing to fix it, a dab of superglue to hold the axles in the grooves. I’ve used superglue to hold down axles in a previous custom and it worked great. I made sure the axles were centered perfectly and then carefully apply the glue away from the rolling wheels. After the glue has set, I scrape away the excess around the grooves with a tweezer. Before I screwed the body back on, I test it’s rolling capability and glue strength by dropping the rolling chassis on it’s wheels to try to break the bond of the glue, the glue is there to stay.
The last step is to solve the issue of the missing engine, and I have the perfect donor for it.
This Heavy Chevy have seen better days, and it donated it’s soul for a good cause.
After half an hour of cutting, filing, and painting the engine is ready for it’s new body.
Once again, superglue came to the rescue and a little detailing of the gas tank (I’ll do the battery in the distant future) later. The truck was reassembled and cleaned to a nice shine. Here are some before and after shots (yeah, yeah you can laugh at my girly glove).
Before:
After:
I was very happy with how the truck came out but then after rolling it around for awhile, the wheels starts to generate an annoying squeaking noise. So I decided to apply this:
This is a tiny bottle of eyeglass cleaner, a solution of water and liquid wax that help clean and protect eyeglass lens. Since my eye surgery 9 years ago, I don’t wear glasses anymore and so I found a new use for this stuff. It works fantastic on squeaky wheels or rusted out axles for fixing squeaks and let the wheels roll smoother, I put a tiny drop on the end of an unraveled paperclip to apply it to the center of each wheels. After applying it, I spin the wheels a few times to get the solution to soak in deeper into the axles and the noise was gone.
The Little Red Wagon got a second chance and now back to it’s former glory with more cool posts coming up in the near future.