Lego Bedford tank truck repairs

This Bedford tank truck will have belonged to the same boy as the fire truck two posts back. It also had details painted in silver, which were removed with Dettol together with those on the fire truck.

Small update: I've later discovered that Dettol will bleach the pigments in coloured ABS plastic if immersed in Dettol for more than half an hour or so. As stated here, applying it locally to a painted surface works fine if used carefully. I'm adding this here in case somebody would read this post and get the impression that Dettol is always safe to use on ABS for any length of time. Cellulose plastic parts (such as this tank truck) don't seem to be affected though.

The nose had its front hacked off (one wonders why), which was built back up with a few chips of red cellulose acetate plastic stuck on with acetone. Careful sanding got it back in shape, but it's still missing the raised silver badge. I'm now considering how to rebuild that, as well as what to do about markings on the truck.

The 1955 Lego fire station

 
This is the fire station of my Lego town. It's operated by the Falck company, who have provided emergency services in Denmark for over a century (and other countries since). This is why there's also a pair of tow trucks present, because Falck offers roadside assistance as well.

Lego offered this fire station set, as illustrated on the back of my town plan amongst other sets and building suggestions. Because the sign over the door was language-specific for different markets, there's no text in the illustration. 

Although the set has a useful selection of components, I just don't like the design. It's essentially two separate carports united by a central tower, which makes no sense as a real building. I had initially thought about turning the two carports into a single space by roofing over the bit in the middle, but then I found the 1955 Byggebog (Building Book) on Brick Fetish, and that had a much nicer fire station in it here at lower right on the page.

So that's the one I built. I did change the tower a bit to have a red top, because that's one feature I did like of the Lego set. I also provided side entrances for the station crew, which the illustrations in the Byggebog were lacking. The station was built from parts in ABS plastic instead of the cellulose acetate bricks from the fifties. I didn't have enough of those at the time, and they don't grip very well so that would have made a very fragile structure. Exceptions are the Falck sign and the aerial on the roof, as well as the three garage floors in white.

Lego Mercedes fire truck repairs

These two vehicles had had details painted in silver by a previous owner. So undiluted Dettol was applied to those areas with a cotton swab. This is the original brown Dettol, which is reasonably safe to use on Lego cars if not left on too long. It does seriously smell up the kitchen however, so do keep a few windows open, and make sure to keep it off your skin and out of your mouth and eyes.

Dettol is a thick fluid, which stays nicely in place on the affected areas. Paint started dissolving after a few hours, and was wiped off with a cotton swab before new Dettol was daubed on. All in all the paint was entirely removed over a weekend, after which the remaining Dettol was thoroughly rinsed off.

Small update: I've later discovered that Dettol will bleach the pigments in coloured ABS plastic if immersed in Dettol for more than half an hour or so. As stated here, applying it locally to a painted surface works fine if used carefully. I'm adding this here in case somebody would read this post and get the impression that Dettol is always safe to use on ABS for any length of time. Cellulose plastic parts don't seem to be affected though.

With the paint removed, I had a very presentable fire truck, complete with its own original hose reel and ladder. 

The only thing left to fix was a missing ladder stop at right behind the cabin, which was cut and sanded to shape from a piece of broken red ABS brick.

Another Mercedes fire truck I obtained in a lot was missing its hose reel as well as one of the hooks the reel fits into. Another strip was sawn off the red ABS brick, and cut and sanded to shape to make a replacement hook.

With the replacement hook in place, a reproduction hose reel I made could be fitted to complete the truck. A sticker underneath the truck mentions these parts in case it would ever get sold.

The Lego garage

Lego offered this garage for use with their little H0 scale cars. The illustration is from a folder from ca. 1958 (Belgian edition, where 90 francs would also buy you a dozen loaves of bread). In the next 10 years it would get a grey floor plate and then double doors opening sideways before being removed from the range together with the little cars. 

The floor with door could also be bought separately, and were incorporated in the Esso service station as well. The 1955 Byggebog (Building Book) devoted a page to showing how the service station could be built with a double garage (shown on Brick Fetish here), which gave me the idea of building my garage to go with my service station.

I used the illustration above in my folder as a building guide. Since the Esso service station is built from parts in cellulose acetate plastic, the garage had to be as well. The first row of bricks held pretty well to the floor plate, but the next was typically very loose. So I again used my childhood trick of clamping in paper from a note block to increase the grip. If you look closely at the photographs (click to enlarge) then you'll see the bricks have warped a little over their 60 years of existence. Because they're small they can still be used, whereas larger bricks generally can't.

To have it fit in with the Esso service station, a number of things needed to be different from standard. The door is white instead of red, as are the little side windows. Those windows are in ABS plastic (I only had one available in cellulose acetate) and have discoloured over time. The finishing touch is the plate trimmed in red, which I was lucky to have to spare from a lot of those plates I once found. 

Here is the garage in place next to the Esso service station. It makes a very nice match, even though some parts have discoloured differently. And the combination is a tad too wide to fit on the town plans, either the older one shown here or the newer one.

There is now space to park both the tank truck and the barrel truck that were made to go with the service station. A second barrel truck and trailer drives by with its load, while a tow truck pulls a Beetle that's had quite an accident.

Lego VW 1200 Beetle repairs

The Lego VW 1200 is the later, shorter version of the Beetle. Like the earlier long version Beetle, the most common damage to these little cars is missing bumpers. The red one above is a case in point, where I was considering how to replace its bumper.

Meanwhile it also had a lot of paint scraped off its roof, which I could fix straightaway. Like the older Beetles, the newer ones are also made from transparent plastic that's coated in a realistic VW paint colour.

Using Humbrol gloss enamels left over from my youth, I mixed and matched the colour of the paint on the Beetle. This should always be done in daylight (preferably a bit overcast) to achieve an accurate match. I then touched in the missing paint on the bare patches taking care to not have too thick a layer.

After a thorough dry (I gave it til the next weekend) the new paint was then wet-sanded down to match the thickness of the original paint. This was done with extremely fine sandpaper (1500 and 2800 grit), the kind used for finishing paint on real cars, obtained from an automotive supply store. The trick is here to apply almost no pressure and let the paper do its work.

Once the repainted patch was smooth and even with the original paint, the whole roof was very lightly sanded and then received a final layer of paint, properly thinned to achieve a smooth finish.

The short Beetle is constructed as described in the later Lego patent (see earlier post). The windows insert has feet that fit into slots in the chassis, and the lower edges of the windscreen and rear window hold the body in place. Opening up one of these Beetles requires gently lifting up the body (starting at one side and then lifting the front bonnet) while pressing back the windscreen. The red Beetle took a bit of jiggling, the blue version came apart quite easily.

The short Beetle with the repainted roof and another one I have had broken front bumpers. Spare chassis aren't easy to come by, so I decided to reproduce the bumpers in polyurethane, cast from a mould in silicone rubber. I did both front and rear bumpers while I was at it.
The gaps you see are the result of air trapped in the polyurethane while casting, but since I only needed the bumper ends these gaps weren't a problem.

The reproduction bumper ends turned out slightly thicker than the originals, but look alright after having been painted. Not 100% perfect but much, much better than before.

Just to be sure, both Beetles have a sticker underneath to point out the repainted roof and repro bumper ends. Should these ever get sold, then there's no cause for misunderstandings.

And then a couple of months later I was sold what looked like a brown VW 1200, but which turned out to have a long Beetle body. Which of course doesn't fit on the shorter chassis. So I exchanged the repaired chassis of the better red VW 1200 with this all-intact example. Which leaves a repaired chassis to spare but means this VW 1200 now consists of all original parts in very good condition.

The spare chassis came in handy after I was very pleasantly surprised to receive two more short Beetles in a trade. Both of which had missing bumpers but both of which I could improve.

The creamy white Beetle got the repaired chassis, thus gaining an extra original bumper end. The red Beetle was in lesser condition, so received the lesser chassis from the white Beetle. Which received a repro bumper, while the red body received a repro piece of wing to replace a broken-off corner.

 
As will be described in a later post, I've made reproduction long Beetle bodies to cut parts from, and it turns out that the rear wing of a long Beetle has the right curves to match the front wing of a short Beetle.

After the chassis swap, I now have an almost bumperless spare chassis, but two more short Beetles with an improved appearance.

The 1955 Lego commercial block

This block of shops has a cinema above and in back, a post office at left and a lamp shop and travel agent at right. PTT is what the Dutch Post, Telegraph & Telephone company was abbreviated as at the time, adding Posterijen (Postal Services - pr "pohsterEHyun") on post offices and transport. Philips started out manufacturing light bulbs before branching out into electronics and more (they even made something a bit like Lego Technic before Lego did). And KLM is of course the Royal Dutch Airline Company. 

This block was based on an illustration in the 1955 Byggebog (Building Book), lower right on the page at Brick Fetish here. In the late fifties it would have been built from parts in cellulose acetate plastic and thus very fragile because those don't grip very well. I built it out of ABS parts for stability and strength, except for the ground floor windows and most printed beams. This building makes a very nice addition to the little town, but is so wide that it doesn't fit anywhere on the town plan seen in other posts.

Because I have two narrow shops where the original has one wide one, I've added a door at the side for the travel agents. The post office has a side door as well, which is the service entrance.

While choosing cars to park in front, my eye fell on the VW bus which sparked a memory. The DDB agency was advertising these in the US as alternative station wagons at the time, and came up with the brilliant advert below. So that's why the VW bus just -had- to be parked there as well.

Lego Mercedes 190SL repairs

I haven't yet done much with my Mercedes sports convertibles. The example above was missing a bumper end, which was replaced by a part cut from a piece of chassis kindly provided by a generous fellow-collector.

These little cars are most often broken and incomplete, missing headlights, steering wheels and with windscreens broken off. Little that can be done to repair them, short of reproducing those parts.

The Mercedes 190SL is assembled so that the interior is glued to the chassis, while holding down the body which is otherwise loose. The windscreen (broken off above) has a wide flat stem which is glued to the front of the interior, and the steering wheel is glued into the dashboard.

There isn't a real reason to take one of these cars apart and it is far from easy to do. I managed to slip the body off the one above from around the interior, because I wanted to see how the windscreen stem was shaped. That's as far as I've come at the moment, while figuring out how best to proceed.

The 1955 Lego tower block

 
These are two versions of a tower block that appeared in Lego promotional paperwork in 1955. I used different windows in the first because I didn't have enough of the right type available, and then used the opposite type for the second tower once I'd found some more.

These towers are amongst the suggestions in the 1955 Byggebog (Building Book), as shown on Brick Fetish here (lower middle of the page). That illustration is clear enough to easily construct the building. It's also featured on the cover of a folder I'd seen, and which Brick Fetish also shows here.

(The other pages of these publications can be accessed from minute links at bottom right.)

For my photos, I've set the towers on the old contemporary town plan. As shown in the illustrations of the folder linked above, the Lego range only had Bedford trucks and VW vans at the time (the old type without windows which I didn't have when I took these pictures). The VW Beetles parked in my pictures were the first passenger cars to be introduced after that.

The rear of the building was probably supposed to be the same as the front, which I did on the second one I built. For the first one I again used different windows because those were all I had. These buildings would have been built from cellulose acetate parts in 1955, but mine are mostly ABS. Partly for strength, and also again because I didn't have enough parts in that type of plastic.

Lego Mercedes box truck repairs

Mercedes box trucks have lost their towing hooks as often as the low-sided versions. The example above was repaired at the same time as other trucks with a red chassis, and in the same way as shown in the previous post about low-sided trucks. It has a sticker to mention the repair in case the truck should get sold (not my intention though) and to easily distinguish it from its undamaged siblings.

This all-red example also received a replacement hook. Its roof had clearly been stepped on in the past, and had a number of cracks in it. These have been superglued together again, from the inside so the traces of where excess glue has been wiped away aren't visible on the outside when the roof is in place.

The Lego transport company

This is the headquarters of the Global Transports Company, which operates the fleets of Mercedes trucks with the well-known globe emblem on their sides. The main offices are in the central tower, while the ground floor has the workshop and garages, and a reception lodge between the front doors.

The building was made to fit onto two emplacements on one side of the town plan, plus the street running between those. This means there's no sidewalk in front of the tower, but I may get round to printing a copy of a sidewalk onto a sheet of paper and lay that underneath.

The building's style is mid-fifties, inspired by some buildings in the 1955 Lego Byggebog (Building Book) as shown on Brick Fetish here. The large roof spans are base plates, like the one the hotel is built on. Because of its size the building is mostly constructed out of modern parts moulded in ABS plastic, though only such parts as were available in the late fifties. The base plates are the oldest, original version though, while the only part that didn't exist at the time is the round brick that can fit inbetween the lugs to have the flagpole in the centre of the roof.

The rear of the building is pretty much like the front except for the lowest two floors. The rear of the garage areas is open so trucks can easily drive in from the back and out the front without need for manoeuvring. The Lego flag flies proudly overhead but is showing its age in a slightly bent pole (trying to bend it straight will probably break it) and some loss to the logo on one side. Still appropriate in that it's a hard-working flag for a hard-working company.

Lego Mercedes low-sided truck repairs

The most common repair to these trucks is replacing a broken-off towing hook. This is a peg pointing downwards at the end of the chassis, around which the drawbar of a trailer fits.

To make a new hook for this all-red truck, an edge is sawn off a broken red brick with a metal saw. Mercedes trucks are all made from ABS plastic, so that's what the brick is made of too.

This piece is sanded to a rounded shape with a rounded end, and polished smooth with automotive compound wax.

Next, a small hole is drilled where the original hook used to be, with a 1-mm drill bit in a Dremel. And while I was at it, I also drilled holes in all the other Mercedes trucks with broken towing hooks. (Tip: using a base plate in a tray keeps the cars from easily rolling away while taking them from display shelf to work table.)

The hole is too small for the replacement hook, so it's bored out with a Dremel bit I use for this purpose (this is not a drill bit but a side-grinding bit, which works well). Next the replacement part is cut to the right length, and stuck in the hole with superglue. A flat screwdriver can push it back up a bit from underneath if it went in too far. 

The reason the new hook is fitted inside a hole is because this is much stronger. Simply gluing a peg onto the broken end where the hook used to be will have it break off again the moment it has some force applied to it. 

An unbroken hook (at top) has been used as an example for the length of the replacement hook. The replacement is a bit thinner due to the thickness of the brick it was cut from, but completely functional. I still need to stick a little notice underneath to point out the replacement in case this truck should ever get sold.

This broken truck was sent along with another little Lego car I bought somewhere. Nothing I can do to repair that kind of damage, except replace the entire cab. Sometime later a loose Shell tanker cab turned up in an auction lot, and luckily the seller was found willing to take out the cab and sell it separately.

To remove the cab, the cargo bed needs to come off first. This is glued to the chassis, and also to the rear of the cab, usually with a large dollop of glue. Twisting a flat screwdriver will separate the cargo bed from the chassis, because there's not that much glue holding it there. A thin cutter will help separate the cargo bed from the cab, though the very lowest point is usually the exception. 

The cargo bed remained stuck so the original cab lost a part of its rear before it came loose. This was cut off the cargo bed front. As this picture shows, the Mercedes cab is held to the chassis by the star emblem in the front grille and two lugs at the rear without glue. Gently pressing in the rear lugs should allow the cab to be removed.
The yellow cab came from an articulated Shell tank truck so could be removed without damage; anything sitting on the chassis behind the cab is likely to be glued to the cab as was the case here. The window insert sits on four slender round legs and fits inside the cab also without glue.

Reassembling the truck was a simple matter. I did take care to only superglue the cargo bed to the chassis and not the rear of the cab, using a clamp to hold it in place for a couple of hours while the superglue hardened completely. The end result is a nice bright colour variation in the line-up of trucks. All that was left to do was replace the towing hook, after finding a Lego piece in the right colour for the chassis.

As far as I know Lego don't make parts in that mustard shade of yellow, so I whittled and sanded down a tan-coloured rod (of the type used for light sabre beams) to about half its width. Another broken brick yielded a strip of blue ABS to make towing hooks for the blue trucks. Quite a bit later the olive green trucks were done as well. The old green colour for these isn't used anymore either so I cut a bit from this olive green sloped brick.