Hot Wheels and Matchbox Customizing Thread

[CodeRedR51]

Rest of us just needs to learn the art. So what do I have to do again? I need a small drill, right? I'm willing to go there. Payoff seems worth it!

Just updated the OP. Drill bit sizes were wrong.

 

[a6m5]

Just updated the OP. Drill bit sizes were wrong.

Just cheap cordless drill would work, right? I can get one cheap from Amazon, or Walmart, along with the bits?

Can you give me a tip on how to find the right size rivets & rivet tool? Maybe on Amazon?

Thanks so much in advance!

 

[Cano]

Rest of us just needs to learn the art.

This. But be warned, once you start you NEVER stop.

 

[McZachenF1138]

Just cheap cordless drill would work, right? I can get one cheap from Amazon, or Walmart, along with the bits?

Can you give me a tip on how to find the right size rivets & rivet tool? Maybe on Amazon?

Thanks so much in advance!

This here is what I have. It costs about $30 at Home Depot. Easy to use, multiple speed, battery lasts forever, and very affordable. 👍

 

[photonrider]

This. But be warned, once you start you NEVER stop.

Yeah. Take a look at Max.

a6m5 - 12 - 14 V Variable Speed Cordless drill with a 3/8ths chuck, and a 1/8th drill bit to start.

Safety Goggles? A MUST!

We can all throw more advice at you. Just ask.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Just cheap cordless drill would work, right? I can get one cheap from Amazon, or Walmart, along with the bits?

Can you give me a tip on how to find the right size rivets & rivet tool? Maybe on Amazon?

Thanks so much in advance!

You can get everything at Wally World. Get the black & decker stuff....cheap. And I'm doing screws, with rivets you can't take the cars apart if you need to. I'm still trying to find the right hardware though.

Edit: drill bit sizes in OP are correct.

 

[photonrider]

Drill bit sizes in OP are correct.

For most jobs, the range would be anything from 1/16 - 1/2 inch. Depends on what one is drilling. Some like a slightly bigger drill (5/16ths) when it'd rivets we are drilling, some smaller (3/16ths). The only correct bit (like religion) is the one you will be comfortable using. And this is no-winkie serious.

Just make sure you get titanium or carbide bits, and not the kind you'd use to fix anchors in drywall.

And I will repeat - Safety glass are a must - as I mentioned in the graphic post about dilling, drills, bits, and so on a few pages ago.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Well I only do hotwheels where the posted bits work great. 1/16 for pilot hole + screw hole, 3/16 takes the rivet head off with ease. Diecast metal is soft, so basic metal bits from Wally World work wonders. It's not rocket science, it's a $1 toy.

Edit: ...and no safety glasses. Well, I wear glasses anyway, so...

 

[McZachenF1138]

...and no safety glasses. Well, I wear glasses anyway, so...

I'm sure that's what my dad said when he had to go to the hospital a couple times years and years ago for getting little metal shavings removed from his eye. Then you get cataracts when you're 47 from them.

BUT if you get good bits and a variable speed drill, you won't need safety glasses as like Jason said, die-cast metals are soft and require little work to drill off the rivet head.

 

[photonrider]

Just updated the OP. Drill bit sizes were wrong.

Well I only do hotwheels where the posted bits work great. 1/16 for pilot hole + screw hole, 3/16 takes the rivet head off with ease. Diecast metal is soft, so basic metal bits from Wally World work wonders. It's not rocket science, it's a $1 toy.

Edit: ...and no safety glasses. Well, I wear glasses anyway, so...

Okay, Jason, I had to go check my bits over - one problem is we work in both metric and SAE - so the numbers get screwed up - 3/16th in inches is almost a quarter inch - too big for rivets but big enough to pop a hole in the hood (when rocket science comes into play) and you want to instal that ram air hood ornament. In centimeters it's another thing. I had a look at the sizes on my usual bits - the smallest one I have - since pilot holes are unnecessary with self-tapping screws - is a 4 mm bit. That works fine to drill through the cap of the rivet - at which point the edge of the cap remaining, comes off, and the rivet post merely slides out of the hole. So I work with 4 mm, 8 mm, and 10 mm bits, but rarely use the bigger bits unless I'm making a hole in the car for a reason, or sometimes a casting by a lesser known manufacturer has bigger than usual rivets.
The danger of using too big a bit is that one can damage the lip of the hole itself that the post comes through. My bit rarely touches the sides of it.
Why are they not cheap bits? The right tool for the job - as I said you wouldn't use a wood bit to make a hole in steel. Cheap bits snap or get worn out quickly and become dangerous. Rocket scientists smart people develop better materials for us hobbysmiths to work with, harder metals, more refined tools that lets us work smart - not harder.
The difference in prices are small in comparison to the benefits. We're not talking tungsten carbide bits here - just titanium - yon everyday modern metal that we use instead of bronze - we passed that age. Titanium bits are widely accepted as the best bet when it comes to soft cast-iron - lasts longer, keeps its edge, and doesn't snap suddenly and fly into those unprotected eyes - but of course, you'll have those safety glasses on.

So to get back to sizes - yeah, I guess to each his own - but don't really need one the size of a shovel. If you own a drill - you'll be eye-balling bits - and eye-balling the bit you are going to drill - and if the bit point looks the same size as the point you are going to drill the bit into - then all is well.

Thanks for taking the time to adjust the OP 👍 - here's a link to a size comparison chart for drill bits:

http://www.bmotorsports.com/faq/drill-bit-sizes-conversion/

 

[CodeRedR51]

My drill bits are in inches.

I do live in the USA.

 

[a6m5]

I love U.S., but they really need to do away with their units of measurement. Metric is so easy, but I still have problem when it gets down to eighth of an inch or whatever.

Good call on the safety glasses. I do have couple of safety goggles, so I'll use that. As for the screws, Jason, do you get those at Walmart as well? What kind of packaging would I be looking for?

Thanks very much guys, I appreciate all the tips! 👍

 

[McZachenF1138]

I love U.S., but they really need to do away with their units of measurement. Metric is so easy, but I still have problem when it gets down to eighth of an inch or whatever.

As a student of mechanical drafting, I know what you mean more than anyone.
You basically have to memorise, by heart, the decimal equivalent to every 1/32 of an inch.

I've got the kg to pounds conversion figured out and think in both at the same time usually, and same goes for speed, but silly enough considering my field of study, I haven't got down mm to inches yet apart from 1" ~ 25mm.

 

[CodeRedR51]

I love U.S., but they really need to do away with their units of measurement. Metric is so easy, but I still have problem when it gets down to eighth of an inch or whatever.

Good call on the safety glasses. I do have couple of safety goggles, so I'll use that. As for the screws, Jason, do you get those at Walmart as well? What kind of packaging would I be looking for?

Thanks very much guys, I appreciate all the tips! 👍

Found mine at True Value, but will order them off the net in the future.

 

[a6m5]

As a student of mechanical drafting, I know what you mean more than anyone.
You basically have to memorise, by heart, the decimal equivalent to every 1/32 of an inch.

I've got the kg to pounds conversion figured out and think in both at the same time usually, and same goes for speed, but silly enough considering my field of study, I haven't got down mm to inches yet apart from 1" ~ 25mm.

Oh, god. I'd hate to deal with it full-time!

Found mine at True Value, but will order them off the net in the future.

When you do, will you link it?

 

[CodeRedR51]

When I get to a computer. Try scalehardware.com.

 

[a6m5]

When I get to a computer. Try scalehardware.com.

Now, that is CRAZY.

 

[photonrider]

Gentlemen! Start. Your. Drills.

The photo above shows a variable speed drill with enough amps and a 0-1200 rpm speed - so you can rotate your drill even at four turns a second for infinite control - especially towards the end of the drilling sequence.
A spare battery comes in handy - you don't want to run out of power while in the feverish dreams of pent-up creative customising.

To the right of the steel rule is a packaged steel 3/16th. This is 3/16th of an inch.
If that puzzles you -think, well - 4 bits of sixteen is a quarter of it. Quarter of an inch. 1/4. Or to put it another way 4/16th. 8/32th, 16/64th.. . .
3/16th is slightly smaller than 1/4 inch. 2/16th would be 1/8th of an inch.
The two packages immediately to the the left of the steel rule are 1/8th= (2/16th) - slightly smaller than the 3/16th that is recommended in the OP.
The left drill bit of those two 1/8 (2/16th) packages is titanium coated for extra durability and has a 1/4 hex shank (the end you put into the drill chuck (the mouth of the drill) for easy loading.

To the right of the steel 3/16ths' package are assorted drill bits definitely not suited for small modelling projects - 1/4 inch steel, masonry, wood, and drywall drill bits.
The open drill bits at the far left of the picture are 1/2 (!!) inch masonry, steel, and wood drill bits - these will destroy small diecast cars and your hands with ease when put into a drill like the one shown. We don't need them here, unless you are drilling for shelves to put your cars up on display - but that's another story.

To the left in this picture above are two strangely numbered drillbits in packages - if you do the match you'll see they reduce in size in stages from 3/16th to 2/16th(which is 1/8th); one is titanium, the others are regular. To the right of the 3/16th is a 1/4 inch. So there you have the entire range to pick from. Rivets come in all shapes and sizes and metals across the manufacturers - if you have these sizes you're pretty well covered - you have 1/8( 2/16th) you also have 5/32 (two and a half sixteenths of an inch) and 11/64 ( two and three quarter sixteenths of an inch) and 3/16ths (the one the OP recommends)- and also a 4/16ths - the 1/4 inch.

WTH are the numbers on the ruler?
To the left - inches in fractions such as 1/4, 1/2, 3/16th, 11/64th and so on.. . .
To the right - the same measurement in millimeters.
Therefore: 1/8 (2/16th) = 3.7 mm,
And:
5/32 = 3.9 mm
11/64 = 4.3 mm
3/16 = 4.7 mm

63/64th of an inch (almost a whole inch) is 25 mm = 2.5 cm. Decimals are easier than fractions for most people - so if you want to figure out the size of the little-less-than-quarter inch 3/16th it's 4.7 mm. There are a huge amount of things in life that are one mm thin so we can usually imagine what 5 mm is like. Imagining what 3/16th is like is more difficult. Easier to think 4.7 mm. However you must admit that 3/16th sounds very engineering macho. When you go into the tool store for a wrench, don't ask for a 14.2 mm, ask for a 9/16th.

The picture below is the baseplate of the HW 333 SP with the cap of the rivet taken off and the post exposed. You can now see the size of the hole, cleanly drilled and the mouth of the hole untouched:
This also leaves a longer post to work with.

This last picture is a close-up of the bits (1/8 - 3/16) and the rear post of the 333SP, with the cap removed and the holes in the baseplate cleanly exposed.

There we go folks - a bit of heads-up via bytes on bits.
​

 

[CodeRedR51]

Wow. Overkill much?

 

[McZachenF1138]

He's stocking up for December 21st.

 

[photonrider]

Wow. Overkill much?

If you're a schoolboy, or a clerk in the Mail Room, yes. For me as a Contractor, I have enough tools to stock a small hardware store. Just tools of the trade. In fact I have a greater addiction to tools than HWs.

They do come in handy, though, even if it's only hanging a picture on the wall - I have the right tool for the job.

I let the photos speak for themselves first - there's a huge amount of info in there for beginners (old hat to super pros in the game like you of course . ) I will add text to that in an edit presently, outlining the comparisons of the different measurements that some of the posters in here had wanted.


Edit: Just finished adding text to it. Any confusion about sizes will hopefully be cleared up, and everybody ace the test when you go into the hardware store for supplies.

 

[CodeRedR51]

I thought they were all for Hotwheels. My bad.

 

[Cano]

Oh look, new page! Perfect chance to show you all an odd rescue I performed some months ago. Long read but interesting, I promise.

I grabbed this Siku Ford Taunus some years ago at my usual flea market for a paltry $2. I could not believe how good it was, the paint was all original and good, it even had the two little jewel-headlamps that Siku used in the 60s.

However! In the picture you can more or less make out that the car is very VERY low. That is because the car most likely fell really hard sometime in its life and popped open. It was then put back together with that horrible yellow glue, but whoever did it didn’t put the suspension pieces in the right order, so the entire thing was collapsed. It looked like it had airbags.

Stupidly, I never took a Picture of how it really was when I found it. In this next picture you can see much of the yellowed glue, but when I took this I had already retired A LOT of it, I mean it, A LOT. When I found it practically the entire chassis was yellow, and there was glue all over the grille shell.

Fortunately, the glue was so old –I reckon it should have been 30-plus years- that you could take it out with your fingernails. The hardest parts were retired with a small screwdriver, until it was enough to take the car apart. The chassis being metal, it was left swimming in thinner for a few days to dissolve what was left of the thing and give it some shine; the really difficult part was to clean the goo that was left in the body, without damaging the excellent survivor original paint. With a lot of finesse in that part, the car was finally clean.

Here we see the suspension system: two small metal wires pushing the axles against the chassis and interior, pretty cool, it bounces awesome but it’s very prone to coming off, so I glued the tubes to the chassis and cured the problem.

I then focused my efforts on making the missing taillight; one of them was still there so at least I had a model to follow. In a friend’s 1:24 kit car junkyard I found exactly what I needed: one of those tube pieces that holds the parts in the box, made of red clear plastic so I could cut it any way I needed.

You cannot imagine how FREAKING DIFFICULT it was to form the tail lamp. The damned piece is intricately small, and my terrible pulse didn’t help at damned all. I did like 4 tries after two of them got lost after I dropped them. Frustrating.

This was as close as I was able to achieve. I know they are not the same color and that the form is shady at best, but when you think about the size of the freaking thing, it came out pretty good. I’m as pleased with the result as can be, it’s better than nothing. A little dab of glue and in it went.

So, the car was complete again, but now other problem arose: closing it. There were no rivets in the thing, and everything in the chassis was SO SMALL. The holes for the rivets were small, the posts for the rivets were small and so far away from the chassis so no gluing it. This had me absolutely puzzled and stalled the project for a good two months.

One day, walking the dogs, I found several rivets, some complete with their metal posts, and a lot of metal posts, lying in the walkway near a restaurant, they had been used to build some signage. I picked up a lot of this trash and, at home, tried them for size. The rivets were, of course, enormous, but the metal posts were almost perfect. They had a bit of play but could be made to work. I cut them to fit then glued them over.

Here, already cut to fit:

And here all installed and tidy. They even look like rivets.

The end result:

The grille shell, perfectly clean of yellow 30-year-old glue.

No stance:

Two tail-lamps!

Rescuing this car was difficult because the point was to keep the overall great original shape the car was in, even if it was already taken apart. The difficulty in finding/making what it needed stalled the project, but it was, in the end, very worth it: when I finished it I started researching the little thing to see what I had in hands. The little I could get from Google-Translated sites in Dutch said that the car was made in 1963!!!!! And it is one of the rarest and most valuable Serie 1 Sikus, because it was fabricated for that year only. A good condition example hovers near 100 euros, a mint-in-box thing, near 200. Obviously mine isn’t worth that at all, but having rescued it gives it a whole new meaning altogether.

Yup, that’s the story of the oldest car in my collection.

 

[Apok]

That's really cool. I think you did a fantastic job with the rear tail light actually.

Though if you glued the tubes to the chassis does that mean it doesn't bounce any more?

 

[photonrider]

That's really cool. I think you did a fantastic job with the rear tail light actually.

Though if you glued the tubes to the chassis does that mean it doesn't bounce any more?

Was wondering about that, too; the suspense is unnerving - does the suspension still work, Cano?
And as always - a masterful job - from the maestro himself.
It was your customising posts in the Collectors Thread, that made me clamour for a separate thread.
Thanks for all the kind comments about my attempts; a compliment from you is a gold medal, of course.

Some new girls that came into Harry's Garage, the pit-boys are punch-drunk dressing them up:

Livery Dept is annoyed as heck that the cars are lined up now waiting for detailing. They wanted to get the Mustangs ready and thrash them on the track.

Back to work - so see you guys later to night.

 

[Cano]

Yes the suspension still works, the posts were glued in the center of the car, leaving the front and rear tips with enough traveling space to still be bouncy, It is harder than stock, but it still moves. I did it because the interior came undone very easily and they could get loose easy enough, and once the rivvet posts were in with the glue, there was no turning back.

 

[Apok]

Ah, I get it now.

Job well done then Cano as I would have raged at you if the suspension didn't work.

 

[AOS-]

You know what I hate the most about customizing these things? Finding the wheels you want, only for the axles to be too short to fit on anything.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Then resize them.

 

[Cano]

Absolutely. Most times you'll have to resize the axxles or modify the chassis to fit your axles. It depends on how much your tires poke out of the car... or how much you want them to poke out of the car.