While adding detail parts to my FVM CP GEVO, I discovered to my horror that the pad printed engine number on one side of the cab had flaked off enough ink to make the resulting appearance totally unacceptable. I had noticed that out of the box, both of my GEVOs had bits of the letter "A" in the middle of the word "Canadian" missing the white ink, probably where the pad went over a molded in latch that protruded a bit. This I could repair with a piece of white letter decal from a Highball Graphics set, as his decals are ultra thin. I wear a vinyl throw-away glove on my left hand when working, to hold the shell or cab, to avoid skin oil, etc getting on the painted surfaces. Perhaps the glove was too sticky for the ink or there is very poor adhesion of the ink on these models. I have never encountered this before on any other model however. I went to the web to look for solutions to remove pad-printed lettering. Most suggestions were extreme: carb cleaner, fine sandpaper, pure isopropyl alcohol, Solvaset, etc. I knew any solvent and rubbing was going to alter the paint surface, leaving it either faded or dulled or both. A pink pencil eraser was mentioned only to be dismissed as useless. Well, I got a fresh pencil with an eraser end and very lightly moved it across the remaining numbers on the cab. They came off with NO effort! No effect on the paint. Took all of 5 seconds to do! While I can now replace the number with Microscale decals in the same font, this should be very alarming to anyone who has this engine (and there appear to be guys here with many of them). I think you could blow off the printing and lettering like a birthday candle, and this does not bode well for the long-term. I will have to inform Matt at FVM about this, because he has lots of new releases planned in both AC and DC versions of this engine.
