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.
