The Magazine For Slot Car Enthusiasts
Matchbox Jeep to Tjet... The “Pride” of Frankenstein.
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By David Martin
6/15/06
I’m a virtual newcomer to the “New World Order” of modern slot cars. Having only been back into the hobby since October 2001, a lot of time has passed since the old days when I knew what was what. As a matter of fact, it was so long ago that Aurora was still in the slot car business. I’m still a little rusty, so in other words, I see myself as a shoemaker by most modern standards. I am learning fast though. This story is basically about how I made my first diecast conversion in my “Little Hobby Shop of Horrors”. Recently, I had finished re-painting my 5th JL pull-back body and was getting pretty bored. I started thinking about what my next goal in this hobby could be. Paint another body? More details on the layout? Buy another new slot car? Well, money is tight these days, as it is for a lot of other people. I wondered to myself “if I can’t afford to buy it, then why can’t I build it?” Honorable thought, but could I really build something that I could be proud of? Could I enjoy a “Martha Stewart-like” moment and actually make my very own “Good Thing”?? ...Or would this foolish idea wind up with me being chased through the streets by the slot car community with torches and pitchforks?? Could I concoct a decent and functional slot car out of some non-descript broken stuff?? The answer was yes. All it takes is a little thought, a basic array of hand tools, and a reasonable idea for your project.

To back up for a moment, I never would have even dreamed up this particular project car if my Mom hadn’t given me a handful of Matchbox cars that she had picked up at a church thrift store. She bought them for 25 cents. No, Mom is not into diecast. What actually caused her to do this was the fact that she and I just recently liquidated a substantial collection of Matchbox and Hot Wheel cars. From this experience she knew that the potential value of the cars was likely to be much more than the asking price of 25 cents so she grabbed them. My Dad had been a serious Matchbox collector until he passed away a few years ago. I was too, but I lost interest way back in the early 70’s. Slot cars were so much more fun. Anyway, from this pile of misfits I chose a Jeep. Why you ask? Well, through the years I’ve owned several very “normal” not-so-fun cars. I always wanted a Jeep. Four wheel drive, convertible, what a blast!! Finally I ended up buying a used 1987 Wrangler back in the early 90’s. I’ve had it ever since and I still drive it every day. Having just gotten back into slots, I’ve been on the lookout for a Jeep slot car. Kind of a tribute to a good friend I guess. The AFX version was okay but a decent one was too pricey for me and besides I only run Tjets. So it was pure luck that amongst that pile of Lesney outcasts that my Mom gave me was a yellow #72 Jeep with a broken windshield. It had bent axles and a paint job that could best be described as a “buckshot motif”. Since it now had little or no value as a diecast collectable it was a perfect project car. It was in far worse shape than even the one I show pictured here. There was really nothing to lose but Mom’s 25 cents.

So I hatched my plan to build a top-down Jeep that was a Tjet look-alike of my daily driver. Same color, same everything, even a tonneau cover and roll bars. To cut costs I would only use scratch materials from around the house and whatever tools I could scrounge up. I would overlook the questionable fact that the body casting I had was of an older pre-1987 CJ and my real Jeep was a post-CJ “Wrangler”. To a Jeep purist it’s a question of apples and oranges. I kind of agree, but then again why let fruit spoil your fun?? I was determined to have a good time with this project and decided not to sweat too much about the details. The gloves were off and I set about the work at hand. It was time to put some lipstick on the pig. My first priority was that I needed raw materials. I had to have something to create the roll bars and all the other various missing pieces to make this project come together. I went on a serious doo-dad scavenger hunt. With an empty coffee can I gathered up nails, needles, Christmas ornament hooks, pins, paper clips, the thin red tube from a can of WD40, bits of blister pack plastic, and even a couple of swatches cut from my flyfishing leader wallet. Basically I grabbed scraps from the bottom of my toolbox, the work bench area of my basement, and every junk drawer in the house. It’s amazing how much great scratch building stuff you can come up with when you really try. I also visited the Tootsie Toy rack in the local pharmacy and scored a Jeep CJ of similar dimensions to the Matchbox model I was using. Why not just use the Tootsie Toy Jeep? In my opinion a Tootsie Toy is just what its name implies. It’s just a toy. They have crummy details, globs of paint, and they’re one of the true “El – Cheapos” in the world of currently available diecast vehicles. Matchbox on the other hand (especially older ones) are really quite detailed, in fact pretty close to HO scale, and in my book are eminently more deserving of a second chance.

Once back at home, I became like some sort of “Dr. Frankenstein”. I began to cut apart the poor Tootsie with a hacksaw and wire cutters, in order to provide me with the parts I needed for my new monster. There would be no mercy today. I filed down the bottom of the freshly amputated windshield and then also the top of what was left on the windshield frame of my project car. I kept at it until they matched. Then I had to remove my project car’s body from its chassis and pull away all the plastic inserts that I found. That meant seats, steering wheel, floorboards, etc. They all had to go. I decided to worry about them later or perhaps not at all. Then I stripped the remaining paint off the body with solvent and cleaned it up to eventually get all the way down to the bare metal. Next I cut off any portion of the body that was too low and would interfere with a Tjet chassis being implanted. My process was a little Neanderthal in nature, but step by step the desired results were achieved. By the way, I used a 5 minute epoxy to join the new windshield to the old frame (it’s great stuff). Well it wasn’t too much to look at unpainted, but it was starting to take shape. For the Jeep’s new color I chose regular old Testors “Gloss Bright Red” because it was the closest thing to my real Jeep’s paint job. So, away I sprayed with 2 coats of Testors fresh from the can. It came out great.

The little tonneau cover began its life as a piece of clear plastic from a blister pack. It was cut to fit inside the rear cargo area of the Jeep and would rest conveniently on top of what was left of the wheel wells. I took the postage stamp sized piece and then laminated it with epoxy to a piece of black vinyl that I cut from my flyfishing leader wallet. I then proceeded to lose this new tiny tonneau. Try asking your wife the following dumb question… “Hey honey, have your seen a small piece of black vinyl about as big as a postage stamp anywhere? It’s about one inch by one inch and it looks just like the cover on my real jeep outside.” I got the exact same puzzled look from her as the time when she saw me crawling around on the floor looking for the Thunder Brushes that I had just dropped. Anyhow, I couldn’t find the little rascal, so I made another one. Roll bars came next. I used a red WD40 spray tube cut to size for the main roll bar. I was worried about the tube’s ability to keep its shape and also the durability factor. I did plan on running this baby someday and I didn’t want the first wreck to be the last. To overcome this issue I inserted a piece of trusty Christmas ornament hook inside of the tubing for added strength. It bent easily and it prevented the tube from looking too square and folded over. Then onto each side of that I attached a ziti shaped piece of the red tube. These would angle back from the top corners of the roll bar and would serve as the braces for each side. I trimmed the excess and applied a little 5 minute epoxy to secure all the joints. Then I glued the whole thing to the tonneau and then the tonneau to the Jeep’s body. Now it’s really starting to look pretty decent. I was stoked.

Screw posts were perhaps the biggest issue for me to consider. Having never done one of these conversions before, I decided to highjack the posts from one of my JL bodies. I cut them out and sanded them. I employed trial and error here as I wasn’t sure what the best method would be to install them. The rear post would sit nicely inside the body, but the front was another issue entirely. It would have to somehow mount in front of the Jeep’s grill area. Again I used workbench scraps and fashioned an extension to mount the front post to. More red tubing became a bumper. Once I was happy with placement I used the 5 minute epoxy to secure both posts in place. Finally, it all got detail painted, the chassis was inserted, and I mounted new tires and rims that had just arrived by mail. Voila ...it’s was a slot car!! Not only that but it was alive!! ALIVE I tell you!!!

The road test was another story altogether. It proved conclusively that this won’t be a Fray Champion in Ferndale or in any other “Dale” for that matter. It is also likely that it will never end up as HOWL’s car of the year. Be that as it may, my little red friend is as fun to drive as my real Jeep, and that makes it my car of the year. All things considered I think this is a win for our side. Is this doing things the hard way? Yes it probably is, but when you take the time to use your head and do things on the cheap, you just might end up learning from the whole deal. At the very least you’ll end up with more money in your pocket when it’s over. Hey, these days it doesn’t hurt to have a little something left over.