No 4 Gruesome Twosome

British made Matchbox Superfast 1969-83
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johnboy
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No 4 Gruesome Twosome

Post by johnboy »

It's difficult to see if this is illustrated on Christian's site, but there is a difference to the lugs in the engine bay, on one model they're braced to the sides. There's also the difference directly under the engine, one is smooth cast and the other has a well with an ejector ring present. The hole in the middle of the bay is also smooth or lipped. (I'm not sure what was going on here, but most of these models seem to be missing their front engines :) )
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GHOSTHUNTER
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Re: No 4 Gruesome Twosome

Post by GHOSTHUNTER »

My initial impression is that these are attempts to keep the plastic Engine component secure, but why muck about with the tooling for the body, far easier and possibly cheaper to retool the Engine component itself. Whatever those changes are for, it has not made any difference to the continued loss of Engines from these models... :D

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Re: No 4 Gruesome Twosome

Post by johnboy »

Just checking my models again and only one has a gearstick between the seats, all the rest have a small rounded boss. Christian doesn't refer to this on his site but he does show a couple of pre-pros that do have this feature. So is this just an early run of interiors? (Sorry about the poor photo).
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Re: No 4 Gruesome Twosome

Post by GHOSTHUNTER »

John, which one are you refering to as 'Pre-Pro', the left model or the right model.

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Re: No 4 Gruesome Twosome

Post by johnboy »

The gearstick is on the left Ghosty so I'm assuming this is the early interior (?)
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Re: No 4 Gruesome Twosome

Post by motorman »

Very interesting JB, sadly I cannot check my #4's (still in storage) however when I can I will. :)
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Re: No 4 Gruesome Twosome

Post by johnboy »

motorman wrote:Very interesting JB, sadly I cannot check my #4's (still in storage) however when I can I will. :)
Thanks mate.
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Re: No 4 Gruesome Twosome

Post by GHOSTHUNTER »

So are we looking at tooling that has lost the cavity that would result in a gear stick not being cast, which we would normally put down to tool ware.

Or...

If the right hand model had the stick appearing through the model's 'Time-Line' I would put it down to old stock components coming back into the production process.

Do we not have a 'Pre-Pro' Gruesome on the forum we can look at?

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Re: No 4 Gruesome Twosome

Post by motorman »

GHOSTHUNTER wrote:So are we looking at tooling that has lost the cavity that would result in a gear stick not being cast, which we would normally put down to tool ware.

Or...

If the right hand model had the stick appearing through the model's 'Time-Line' I would put it down to old stock components coming back into the production process.

Do we not have a 'Pre-Pro' Gruesome on the forum we can look at?

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David (vetrad) sold his pink prepro at auction last year but may have clear images kept on his home computer with any luck.
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Re: No 4 Gruesome Twosome

Post by GHOSTHUNTER »

that would be handy...can you help us David!

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