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These are rare in the USA. A while back, a very dear friend of mine picked up a few clear window beaters at a UK toy fair and mailed them over. Here is the last of those beaters, all fixed up and ready to hit the highway. I beefed up the suspension with a new suspension strip made of larger, stronger plastic. It no longer has the sagging rear end and now sits like the day it was new.

Nice Tin, always good to see these precious toys back on the road.

In 2006 I started collecting and fixing up neglected Matchboxes. With necessity being the mother of invention, I spent countless hours learning how to replicate decals.
Also, since money is the necessity for buying Matchboxes, I shamelessly imitated, labored, experimented and tried to be creative selling (I'm not a business major).
I still have hundreds of candidates and lots of parts waiting for a spark, an inspiration, to motivate me back into the game. Maybe 2016 will be the year.

I hope everybody here and in the hobby have a great Holiday, and a Happy New Year!

Nice Restauration.
I do have the same laying arround at home but as often with this model the windscreen has a small crack.

Stephan

Looks superb

Thanks guys, it was fun to make. I had to polish the windows to remove lots of little scratches and the finished result proved worth the effort.

I hate that these suspensions sag so badly. Joe, do you have any pre- recondition photos for comparison?

mbox2000 wrote:I hate that these suspensions sag so badly. Joe, do you have any pre- recondition photos for comparison?

No, but I've plenty of other old worn out #66 busses I could photograph LOL. Problem number one is that the suspension strip is no larger or stronger than one you find in a car like the Fiat or Corsair. The strip only holds up the forward of the two rear axles (the rear most axle is not supported at all). To fix this problem, you have to make a larger and longer (towards the rear) suspension strip and replace the original strip.

Another simple fix is to glue the rear most axle at its static resting point in the axle groove of the base. Then reassemble using the old suspension strip and the bus will sit like it should.

That looks great! I picked up one of these last time I was in England. It looks so much better with the clear windows.
And that suspension fix really did the trick, well done!