These are a pair of 683 Chieftain Tanks a fellow in Victoria has asked me to repair. I have none of these in my collection and hadn't worked on them before. There was a bit of body work to do as well was a lot of fun. The biggest issue was the barrel raising mechanism was broken on both of them. I ordered replacement barrels, but was not really happy with the quality of the firing springs. They were very weak. I played around with repairs and managed to pin one back together with the judicious use of a small drill and some liquid steel. the other required a bit more ingenuity though as it was both broken and bent badly as well as a few bits were missing. I tried numerous glues etc but the strength was not there and they kept breaking. I came up with the idea of using a piece of very stiff wire inserted and bent to fit the raising screw. As the mechanism is hidden it didn't have to look original or pretty. I have included a picture of the fix in case someone else needs to do this. It works very well indeed and the original firing mechanism is so much stronger than the replacement.

Below you can see what the toys looked like before I got them. I am very pleased with the results, and I hope the owner is as well.