Dinky Space 1999 Eagle restoration

• Completely dismantle the Eagle. The pod comes apart by drilling out the two bottom rivets - don't worry about reassembling as a small screw or glue will suffice. The leg sections unscrew with a cross-head driver, and the main superstructure unscrews in similar fashion. The engines also have a central rivet that needs drilling out - or leave all this if the engine red paint is in good enough condition?
   
  
• Strip the original paint from the core metal parts using caustic soda - this is messy and dangerous, so do follow the example of this YouTube video by toy-polloi! In particular, do it outside and use gloves!!
   
  
• Repaint the metal parts in white - satin spray paint is best, glossy would be too shiny and need 'weathering' to look right (though decals help either way, by breaking up the areas of white).
   
  
   
  
• Repaint the plastic pod doors and feet - if you like. I didn't do this but if I had done then I'd have gone for white again, to match the rest of the pod and the TV series.
   
  
• Restore any yellowed plastic. The original 'girder-work' on the Dinky Eagle was pure white, but it did tend to discolour with age and dirt/play-time. Your options are to restore this to white with hydrogen peroxide (again, a toy-polloi video helps!) or, as a last resort or if the plastic was physically broken, to replace it by salvaging a better example from another otherwise battered toy with better plastic frame!
   
  
• Re-tension the leg springs. One of the facets of the original toy was that the weight of the toy (plus play time!) gradually bows/bends the internal springs slightly, meaning that the Eagle sits closer to the ground than it could. By reversing the springs, the slight bow is now to the advantage of increased ground clearance, making the Eagle look more realistic and closer to the TV show look. By 0.5cm for each leg, but it all helps.
   
  
   
  
• Paint in the side booster surrounds (black, from the TV series), and nose cone windows/splines. Ideally with a small brush or sharpie, it's probably best to mask the surrounds in case your brush or pen slip!
   
  
   
  
• Reassemble!
  
  
• Add decals as needed, these can be found easily online or even made/printed yourself. If true decals, moisten and apply with tweezers in the usual way. I used the self-adhesive kind, which is cheating a little and doesn't look quite as good, but hey... they're what I had to hand. The use/placement of decals are up to you, but this original studio photo (and similar on Pinterest) should be a good source of ideas. The only bits you probably have to get right are the 'Moonbase Alpha' patches on the nose cone sides.
   
  
   
  
• Adjust/hack the pod support hook for a tighter fit to the main superstructure. (This item under construction! - watch this space. I'm working on it! Even though I'm kind of at the point of diminishing returns in terms of realism!!)
   
• Add a little padding to the back of the nose cone, to allow a believable door for the astronauts - the Dinky die-cast sections were too narrow, vertically. I experimented here with a tiny amount of white-tac, though any white (or painted white) putty or similar would work. If you care! Below, this is the amount I started with, and then I pressed and moulded in place with a plastic spudger, to better fill the gap...
   
  
  

See also my photo gallery of the final, restored toy, with filler, decals, and paint/ink all in place.

You can contact me at [email protected] and you can 'tip' me if these pages have proved helpful to you by using PayPal. Thanks.

PS. See also my LEGO Space 1999 Eagle construction page