Tamiya Racemaster Lunchbox

[Basher67]

This is a 1/12 Racemaster that originally came with the Rothmans Porsche body. I had a vision of somehow mounting a lunchbox van body on it but never did because, even though the wheelbase was perfect, it was going to take alot of work to make it happen. I chickened out and mounted an F1 body I had laying around. It looked good but it was----meh. It did not induce excitement or pride. So after staring at it on the shelf for far too long, I've decided to go for it. While I've built more rc cars over the years than I can count, I've never done any serious repair or customizing of the styrene hard bodies, so I'm outside my comfort zone on this one. I want a little custom hot rod van like we used to see in the 70's. Not much needed on the chassis except some new tires. 90% of this is going to be the repairing, customizing and mounting of one of my all time favorite Tamiya bodies. I've rough cut the wheel wells enough to get the body down close to the right stance and that's it so far. Any advise out there on the best styrene body glues, fillers etc would be great.

[Traffic22]

I don’t have any advice in glue or body filler, but subscribed to see how it turns out. That is cool. Vans are awesome.

[XLR8]

Doing custom work on hard bodies can be a challenge. The material isn't quite the same as the generic styrene sheets you can buy, it has a higher level of chemical resistance so it's harder for the glue to penetrate and melt the pieces together. I've used Plastructs Bondene Plastic Weld but with mixed results. Yeah, it sticks the parts together but if it's takes a hit, it will snap. Some of the members over at the Scale Builders Guild are mixing a styrene/MEK slurry in a jar and using that to bond and fill factory hard bodies. For filler, I've had great results using Tamiya Putty (basic type) - it flows, sands and feathers very nicely.
Anyway, this is going to be a very neat project - I'm looking forward to updates.

[Basher67]

I just watched a video a couple days ago where a guy was using a "styrene slurry" to fill gaps and holes. I have no idea what this stuff is, but I'm going to research how to make it.

[XLR8]

I haven't yet experimented with genuine MEK.
Anyway, you might find some useful information here
https://scalebuildersguild.com/forum/showthread.php?14519-Plastic-Weld-Working-with-Modeling-Plastics