Lego Fiat 1800 repairs

 This blue Fiat 1800 showed signs of having lived quite an active life before arriving on my work table.

It also had two broken bumpers, where I'd only spotted the damage to the front in the seller's pictures when I obtained it (the broken rear bumper is somewhat hidden in the shadows). A friendly fellow-collector had been approached for the broken front part at top left in the photo. But he kindly sent me the rest of the chassis as well, including the loose front axle.

Normally I like to keep these cars as closely as I can to how they left the factory, but in this case I decided to repair and use the replacement chassis instead of cutting off two bumpers and adding those to the original chassis (which is still there should I change my mind). 

The Fiat 1800 is a later addition to the series, and is constructed in the way described in the later Lego patent (see earlier post). Pressing down the rear bumper and inserting a thumbnail will open it up, after which you need to press on the rear window while pulling the body to the rear to get it past the bottom edge of the rear window that holds it in place. 

The two halves of the broken replacement chassis were superglued together, and fitted to the body to hold them steady while drying. The front half came loose at the first attempt, but lifting the rear of the car helped to keep it sitting in place.

The particular shape of the chassis required two L-shaped pieces as replacement axle mounts. 

The playworn body was only very slightly sanded down with 1500 grit wet/dry sandpaper on the larger surfaces. Rubbing compound took out the vast majority of scratches, and copper polish made the car shine again. It still shows a few traces from previous play, but all in all looks quite a bit better.

One of my red Fiats is in lovely condition, but came in with a broken axle mount. This received the standard repair as shown above.

Another red Fiat shows glue damage underneath, because it was stuck to the same model train layout as my grey Citroën (see older post). But a previous owner had already done a nice job of cleaning it up, so there was nothing left for me to do on it.