I am into the older Tyco/Mantua cars with the metal bases and metal trucks. I have over the years picked up trashed cars with the metal bases intact. I have wanted to combine these metal bases with bodies from 70s-vintage all-plastic cars.
It appears that the plastic cars all have a little round tab in each corner that slips into a hole in the plastic base. These holes seem to correspond with those in the corners on the metal frames.
Is it hard to pry the plastic bodies from the plastic frames on 40-year-old cars? Does the plastic get brittle, and do they break easily? I would like to do these modifications, but I don't want to destroy any cars along the way.
Thanks in advance!
Plastic does get brittle with age, but not so brittle that you shouldn't give it a try.
I think a tool for opening things like Iphones would be useful to slip in the side:
https://tinyurl.com/ycp9gm4f
Sometimes the paint sticks the body to the frame or the previous owner glued it together.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
I am not familiar with the Mantua Tyco cars. The bulk of my rolling stock is blue box or Accurail. But, I would expect you could get the floor (bottom) out of a plastic car free of the superstructure with some cautious prying around the floor-superstructure joint with a #11 blade in an Xacto knife. Or perhaps some scoring of the joint with the point of the blade.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
Thank you both for your replies.
David, the older Tyco/Mantua cars were very much comparable to Athearn and Acurail in terms of color, detail, use of metal parts, and weight. The main difference was the use of the Talgo trucks, as opposed to frame-mounted couplers.
I will try some experimenting with some older broken cars to see how they handle, although I suppose there are a lot of factors that would play into how the plastic has aged from one car to the next.