10 replies to this topic

[Humbolt]

Hi  my first post,     Has anybody had any experience with the cox bodies made by classic tin toy company ?  I am interested in the  cheetah black body & have been in contact with the company

 

They tell me the parts are injection moulded using original dies, any information before i make an expensive purchase would be appreciated 

 

cheers

 

Paul

[Joe Mig]

The link you provided does not bring us to anythin we would be intristed in.

[Don Weaver]

Looks pretty expensive to me for re-pops (and NOS as well).  The Cheeta with all the parts to make a complete body is $450.00.  The Chaparral 2E is $650.00!

 

Don Weaver

[tlbrace]

I've built up a Chaparral using their bits. I had to find, at some time and expense, a correct motor plate to put on a 2D chassis as well as a proper interior for a mag frame car (found a resin repop interior from Italy).

 

I have no where near $650 in the Classic Tin Toy bits, everything is negotiable.

 

The thing about the Classic Tin Toy parts is that they are styrene plastic, not resin, so the tooling for injection molding is a lot more expensive and, since they sell so few, the prices are a bit higher.

 

As to the bits themselves, I'm not sure about the tolerances used when creating the molds. The bits did not fit together very well at all without some trimming/fitting.

 

I've not had one of the Cheetah bodies in my hands, but based on what they look like and the bits to build them up, I think they are repops of the Cheetahracha bodies.

[TSR]

They tell me the parts are injection moulded using original dies.

 

 

So they took the original molds that had been for the most part, sold to junk, found them, removed the years of corrosion from them (uncoated 1960s tool steel has a really good tendency to rust almost instantly when exposed to oxygen...) and put them back on line?

Very unlikely. What they likely have done is go to China with samples of original bodies, and had a mold company make new molds at a price, and are now trying to recoup their investment by charging more for a new body than a genuine original costs when smartly purchased.

Yes, really cool! 

 

Just to that you know, when I visited Bill Selzer in the year 1998 in the new Cox Hobbies digs in Corona, the ONLY surviving slot car molds were those of the Supercuc window and roof, the Chaparral 2 and 2D windows and those of the Dino.

REH got them when Selzer sold out to Estes and retired, but after spending a small fortune to repair the Dino windows and get back in production, they did not pursue repairing the others.

All the other molds were auctioned and sold for junk in the 1982 bankruptcy of the Cox Hobbies company in Santa Ana, and as I wrote, it is VERY unlikely that any survived in usable condition. Unused injection molds do not like to be unused.

[Humbolt]

Thank you for your replies Gentlemen, I only enquired about the Cheetah to the company so maybe they have the original tool for that one only, though given what TSR tells us it does seem doubtful 

 

regardless of where the dies originated from i understand that there expensive to make hence the high price for the parts, my concern is the tolerances are not right as my modelling skills are dismal,  i may have to think about this a bit longer

 

BTW there is a virus or bot of some kind on this site called viglink putting links on our posts to all kinds of strange things

 

Paul

[Cheater]

Paul,

Viglink is not a virus.

See this thread in Board Tutorials & Info:

Why some words are blue & clickable

[TSR]

My concern is the tolerances are not right

 

The Cox Cheetah bodies (both of the 1/24 scale models) fit together beautifully, so that would be a clue that the tooling is not the same.

[Jean-Michel Piot]

Long delay to reply...

 

I used a Classic Tin Toy body + the front wing + their clear parts set.

 

They are just alike the genuine parts. I could compare, as I also built a Cox Cheetaracha and restored another one (and also have one in its box).

 

The parts are expensive but the quality is excellent.

 

You can put Cox parts on the Classic Tin Toy and vice versa with strictly no problem.

 

As you may know, I also used one wing and many wind screens they make for the 2E. Here again, it is just perfect as I could compare to genuine parts.

 

Now, as for their "chrome" parts, things are little different: the molding is perfect but the parts are not chromed. For the 2E stacks, I had to repaint them with black + Alclad. 

 

Better than nothing anyway ...

[Humbolt]

Thank you for the information Jean-Michel,

 

Much appreciated

[TSR]

We compared a while ago, the Chaparral 2E body that a friend bought from Classic Toy with a mint Cox original, NOS body. The Classic Toy example is dimensionally different from the original Cox model and has slightly different mold marks under close observation. It is also very slightly smaller, like 1/16" in length. Most original trim parts do fit with a little persuasion. But for the price, you can get a real one in excellent to mint condition and they certainly are not rare, so it seems to me to have been an exercise in futility on their part. The collectors world is tiny, and most who wanted these models already have them, reducing the size of the market even further. All one has to see is the fall in price of those Chaparral models from 1995 to today. In 1995, a mint example was easily 3 times what one can be had for today, in either injected styrene kit or polypropylene RTR versions.