Boxing up the Toyota Baja Truck

In 2000 Hot Wheels added an off-road racing legend to their lineup, the Toyota Baja Truck. While being a gorgeous casting some of HW's design decisions left me wanting. I never need much of excuse to swap out the wheels on almost any Hot Wheels model, while they function very well, few of the designs really tickle my fancy. My other major complaint is the goofy looking spare tire floating in the back of the truck. This had to go for two reasons, one, the wheel was not going to match the new wheels for the truck and secondly, that thing is just plain goofy looking.

In my search for some new wheels for the 'Yota I spotted a suitable donor, in fact I had found something much more. My prospective donor was none other than the Baja Bullet desert truck from Matchbox. This truck features a much more modern set up for not only the spare tire but also the engine compartment and cooling fans.

After pulling both trucks apart I began cutting away at the interior/bed of the MBX, VERY SLOWLY. What is cut can not be un-cut, so I took my sweet time and checked my fitment after every cut. After a significant amount of cutting to the interior/bed and a small piece cut off of the Toyota's bed the truck was almost finished. I was happy that I was able to fit the important parts of the roll-cage back into the truck and keep the front bumper. The original interior of the Toyota was mostly ground away but surprisingly the HW retained all of its original pieces (well, not the wheels of course).

The proof, of course, is in the pudding, eh, pictures. Check it out and you be the judge. My verdict, awesome!

One HOT Willy's Jeep

The old flat fender Willy's Jeep is a highly revered classic. The Matchbox model is truly beautiful. But what I wanted to do was make my Willy's ready to tackle the terrain and eat boulders for breakfast. Originally I set about fabricating a roll cage from brass rod, meticulously filing and soldering away. At first things were going well and I was making steady progress. But then I pushed my luck and poof! It all went to hell. In the days that followed I wrestled with the idea a approaching the cage again, but the something new presented itself.

I was looking at my spare parts and I found a roll-cage I had left over from a recently sacrificed HW FJ40. With a few snips from my nippers I was delighted to find that the roll-cage was a perfect fit in my old Jeep. Awesome!

Next I need to fit some bigger cleats under the fenders. At first I was worried that this would take some heavy cutting and axle fabrication. But once again I was pleasantly surprised. With only six small cuts to the chassis and a bit of the old sanding wheel on the ends of the rear fenders I was able to fit some monstrous MBX wheels.

The end result was fantastic. This truck looks like it was meant to be this way. It looks like it could have shipped straight from the factory! And the best part of all? It was easy as pie.

Heating up the MBX FJ40

The Matchbox casting of the 1968 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 is outstanding.  The level of detail immediately made this one of my favorite casting and I own quite a few of them now.  You've seen me add a lift kit to my safari FJ40 in the past, here.  This time I wanted to go for something a bit more subtle.

I started by cracking apart two different Land Cruisers, one from Matchbox and the other, the custom FJ40 from Hot Wheels.  The goal, to get the tube bumper off the HW FJ and put it on the MBX.  The nice thing about this swap is that the chassis are very close in dimension, but this is where the niceness ends.  So, I tossed the MBX chassis and the HW wheels and got to work opening the back of the HW chassis to accommodate the tab cast into the back of the MBX FJ.  Using my Dremel and a cutting tool, and keeping the old chassis nearby for reference this went pretty smoothly.  As always, go slow and take a little material at a time, you can't easily put back what is now gone.  Then came the bumper, I did not want to make any modifications to the casting itself, so this meant that I needed to cut a channel behind the bumper to allow the body to recede into it a bit, this was the dangerous part, if I cut to deep I would chop off the very bumper I was trying to mount!  Fitment of the interior/bumper was still a bit of a problem and I needed to cut and grind some internal structure both on the interior/bumper and on the chassis itself.  After that was fitting properly I used my Dremel and cut-off wheel to remove the rear of the original interior, this, with some trimming, would help hold the axle in place and keep the windows where they belonged.

To top it all of I added one of my model truckers, which consequently would not have fit in the cast Matchbox interior.  Now my FJ40 is ready to hit the trails and is still quite street-able.  Pretty sweet.  Anyway, take a look at the photos and judge for yourself.