From 1965 to 1970, I worked on prod­uct design in Meccano’s draw­ing office. Some­time dur­ing 1968 I was tasked with design­ing Joe’s Car. The orig­i­nal pro­posed  lay­out of this mod­el was giv­en to senior design­er Ter­ry Boland who only got as far as fix­ing the shape and lay­out of the major body parts when he was pro­mot­ed to New Prod­ucts Man­ag­er; so it was passed to me.

After about ten weeks of detail design and just before release for tool­ing, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Joe Fall­man insist­ed on a flash­ing light with­in the engine cowl; so I had to shoe horn a AAA bat­tery, switch and bulb hold­er into a chas­sis already already filled with mech­a­nisms. In order to achieve this in a short time­frame, I was assist­ed by the late Fred Risk who was respon­si­ble for check­ing all prod­uct designs before hand­ing them over to tool design. After work­ing on numer­ous sketch­es a design was roughed out, so I com­mit­ted it to paper. With no time left for mak­ing a mock up, it had to work right the first time.

For the pur­pos­es of this arti­cle I have almost com­plete­ly dis­man­tled a rather shab­by issue 1 Joe’s Car that was miss­ing tail fins, pis­ton rods and lugs. I man­aged to source white met­al replace­ments for the fins and lugs, as well as a 2.2 mm diam­e­ter stain­less steel rod for the pis­tons. I believe it is part of the 500 test pre-pro­duc­tion run that every new Dinky under­took.

If all went well, the 500 fin­ished and boxed mod­els were put into stor­age for sell­ing in the nor­mal way, but an error was missed; the On/Off engrav­ing for the switch had been left off and had to be cor­rect­ed before seri­ous pro­duc­tion com­menced. So the ini­tial 500 boxed mod­els must have been sold with the omis­sion because they still keep turn­ing up.

In pro­duc­tion, ten­sion pins were used for the pis­ton rods. Ten­sion pins have a body diam­e­ter which is about 0.2 mm larg­er than the hole they’re meant to fit, and a cham­fer on either or both ends to facil­i­tate start­ing the pin into the hole. The spring action of the pin allows it to com­press as it assumes the diam­e­ter of the hole. Job No. 61983, 74.5 mm is for Joe’s Car.

It was nec­es­sary to grind off  the spun over riv­et heads hold­ing many of the parts togeth­er. To allow lat­er reassem­bly, the remain­ing mazak spig­ots were drilled and tapped to accept 9BA round head screws and wash­ers. No attempt was made to dis­man­tle the glued seat assem­bly com­pris­ing seat, steer­ing wheel and pilot, split the engine mold­ings apart, remove the semi-tubu­lar riv­et hold­ing the switch to the lamp hold­er, or force fit the alu­minum cylin­ders into the upper body. This was to avoid irrepara­ble dam­age to these parts. The con­i­cal spring in the bat­tery com­part­ment was also left in place, being very secure­ly staked in posi­tion. The paint I have used isn’t a true copy. This was not an issue for me as I was­n’t try­ing to cre­ate a per­fect repli­ca. The total num­ber of parts is 59 which is very high for a Dinky Toy.

Obvi­ous­ly, all the assem­bly actions that fol­low would be aid­ed in pro­duc­tion by jigs and fix­tures to locate parts cor­rect­ly and pre­vent them from mov­ing dur­ing riv­et­ing or screw­ing togeth­er.

I’ve attempt­ed to sequence the build in the man­ner of pro­duc­tion. The first action is to fit the alu­minum cylin­ders and the top finned cross bar to the upper body. Next, all the parts fin­ished in green would be auto sprayed and the white details masked sprayed by hand. Else­where, the mazak sus­pen­sion arms would be zinc plat­ed and the engine mold­ings ultra­son­i­cal­ly weld­ed togeth­er before being sent away for vac­u­um plat­ing.

Now it’s time to cre­ate a num­ber of sub-assem­blies. The pis­ton rods are pushed into the tail fins. The wheels are attached to the four sus­pen­sion arms. The bulb car­ri­er is fit­ted with the switch which com­pris­es the switch lever and mold­ed wash­er all secured with a semi-tubu­lar riv­et. The pos­i­tive con­tact is then held in place by a mold­ed clip. Final­ly, the pilot and his steer­ing wheel are glued into the seat mold­ing.

With the upper body held in a spe­cial fix­ture to ensure cor­rect ori­en­ta­tion with the lugs, the fins are fit­ted. The engine is now fit­ted and secured with two self tap­ping screws because the neg­a­tive bulb con­tact pass­es through it at a lat­er stage.

With the upper body still invert­ed, the exten­sion spring and wash­er are attached to the tow­er at the rear of the body. Next, the bulb hold­er assem­bly is attached to the upper body, trap­ping the neg­a­tive con­tact. Because it was impos­si­ble to hold the seat in place using sup­ports cast into the low­er body, the seat was dropped into the cab from below and held while the body was turned over and the win­dow pushed into posi­tion. Clips mold­ed on the inte­ri­or of the win­dow engage the seat, and a hole at the top of the win­dow clips over a ramped stud cast into the roof of the cock­pit, thus secur­ing the win­dow per­fect­ly flush with the body. This com­pletes assem­bly of the upper body.

The rear sus­pen­sion spring is secured, sus­pen­sion arms locat­ed and held in place by the rear sus­pen­sion cov­er which slots in and is secured with two spun over riv­ets. A com­pres­sion spring is fit­ted to the wing release but­ton which is then placed in the low­er body, fol­lowed by the front sus­pen­sion arms, sus­pen­sion spring and release but­ton retain­er which holds every­thing in place. The con­i­cal bat­tery spring is staked into posi­tion. The low­er body assem­bly is now com­plete.

Now, the upper and low­er bod­ies must be joined. With the low­er body secure­ly held in a spe­cial fix­ture, the wing actu­a­tor is placed in the body in the rear posi­tion ensur­ing that the tail fin lugs engage the slots in the actu­a­tor. Both wings are locat­ed in their piv­ot holes in the body, and the actu­a­tor is set to the open posi­tion and secure­ly held down with clamps. The ten­sion spring is hooked on to the actu­a­tor.

The upper body is now care­ful­ly hooked into the rear sus­pen­sion cov­er and low­ered into posi­tion. With a lit­tle jig­gling, the wing piv­ots will find their holes in the upper body. Final­ly, the jew­eled head­lights are glued in, the bulb screwed into its hold­er and the engine exhaust fit­ted.