Lesney Matchbox #21a Long Distance Coach Restoration

Thanks fellers!

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming for this thread... Lesney restorations! I picked this one up on my last trip to England, 2 years ago! Hard to believe it's been that long. I need to use my free airline benefits and get my butt back over there!
Anyways, I stripped the paint some time ago, but never got around to painting it for some reason. But it's finally done! It's amazing, but the paint is a 97 cent spray can from walmart, and it matches the original paint pretty well!!

Interesting kiddie paint job it had before:

Now I usually like to leave some homage to the kiddie paint jobs, but I decided to bring this one back to its original form! Though I did leave the baseplate untouched, as I like to do. Other than polishing the axle ends of course. It came out pretty well I think!

Matchbox Routemaster Bus 60th Anniversary Series CHASE MODEL

So one of my "Holy Grails" of diecast collecting arrived in the mail today. I was never able to find one of these back in 2013 when this series was out, and have wanted one every since. And today is the day!! It's a stunning model, love the "spectraflame" look of the paint and the greatly detailed tampos. If you don't have this one in your collection, do yourself a favor and spent the $20 or so and grab one.

Corgi Jaguar Mark X Restoration

Hey there folks, hope the weather where you are is better than it is here!! We're really getting pounded with ice. So I'm staying in today, spending the day playing with toy cars! What could be better, am I right?

So here's an old Corgi I picked up on one of my trips to England. A bit bigger than the scale I normally work in, but this project has been a lot of fun. Here's what I started with..

I liked the dark blue on the original car, but I thought a color change was in order. I'm very happy with how it turned out. Only problem is I have one size of headlight jewels, and this Corgi came with two different sizes. Eventually I'll have to find the second size. But it looks great!

Posing with it's smaller brother haha

Lesney #32b-Jaguar E Type Restoration 4

Hey everybody! I've got one more custom to share with you, and then I'm all caught up with projects to share unfortunately. The cold is really setting in here... I love winter but dang does it put a damper on the diecast fun! Oh well. That being the case, you'll be seeing some changes going on around here. The blog will be shifting a bit from focusing on customs and restorations, to diecast as a whole. I'll be featuring more of my favorites from my collection, and who knows what else! Hopefully you enjoyed my "Postflight Briefing" column. For those that don't know, I'm a pilot, and go by "MBXPilot" on many of the forums. So I may sneak in an aviation reference or two from time to time.

Anyways, onto the pictures! I love Jaguars, and the Lesney E Type is no different. This is my 4th custom E Type, and definitely one of my favorites. I got it looking like this, 2 wheels and all...

A pretty sad sight indeed...

But with a set or rear wheels, and a coat of the same paint as my most recent Ferrari restoration, it was looking sharp in no time!!

Hope you like it! Leave a comment if you do!

Lesney #05e-Lotus Europa Restoration

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers. Hopefully you have a great day filled with turkey, pecan pie, and family!

Here's a restoration I finished not too long ago. I got it on ebay for cheap, it advertised that it had a "new paint job" haha. You be the judge of that...

It was kind of a weird purplish gray color, and needed to go!!!

With this cool old Lotus, I decided to break out my airbrush for the first time in ages. It could definitely be better, but I'm happy with how the paint has come out. It's a Tamiya copper color. Gorgeous color!! A little chrome detailing on the wheels and it's done..

Might do an extra bit of detailing at some point. What do you think?

Lesney #33c-Lamborghini Miura Restoration & Step by Step Guide!

Hello my friends It's been a while. Life of a college senior can be a crazy one, but I'm back with a fantastic restoration for you. Instead of just sharing the exact same pics as I do on my Facebook page and my thread on HobbyTalk, I've decided to do a bit of a step-by-step guide on this blog page.
I've wanted to do a Lesney Miura for a long time, and I finally got one from a friend on a Facebook trade group. Here's how it was when I got it:

The only real un-correctable flaw with this one was the big crack in the rear window..

But that's easily correctable when you have a big "junkyard" full of parts cars! Like this transitional Miura with a busted front window.. but the rear is mint!

Nothing a little cutting and replacing can't fix.

Another issue this one had, is the driver's door wasn't fitting quite correctly. I decided to grab a door from the transitional donor car and see if it fit any better.. Looks like a real beater now, huh?

Here's all the parts together:

Another issue, as you may have noticed, is the lack of tires that plagues so many regular wheel era Lesneys... In addition to that, one of the hubs was quite damaged. I like to leave the wheels all original on my restoration if I can, but this was just too bad to ignore. 

No problem though, onto the junkyard!!

All the problems fixed, now onto the painting process:

I forgot to take a picture of it baking in the toaster oven, but you get the idea...

Anyways, here it is now all finished!

Luckily I was able to drill it properly so it just snapped back into place. 

What do you think? Drop me a line with some comments.