I wanted a 6465-85 Lionel Lines tanker to make a complete Alaskan set from 1959. Finding a good one and one that fits my spending goals has been hard. What do you do?
I decided to get one that wasn't so valuable along with a sister car that is very plentiful and cheap. From the 2, kit bash 1 good car.
I found a 6465 tanker with a good body, but cracked walkways on one end and a rusty frame. I found a nice Orange with black caps 6465 from the same period.
This is the 6465-85 I started with. Here it is disassembled. 1 End cap is bad and the frame is rusty. There are two tabs bent inside the tanker body to hold it to the frame. How do you get it out? Some sort of tool with a J or hooked tip. I have a set of dentist tools from the days when they used hammer and chisel to work on your teeth. One worked perfectly to catch and unbend one of the tabs that let me remove the body.
I used a 5/32" drill to drill out the rivet upset- ring from the truck side. I had to use some flat tipped needle nose pliers to grab onto a bit of the rivet head to keep the rivet from spinning while drilling on it. Drill with light pressure just deep enough to remove the upset-ring that holds the truck on. Then the truck should easily come off the rivet. Sometimes a light prying is needed. If you drill too deep you may wallow out the plastic hole in the truck.
Side view of the body
This is the plentiful and lowly 6465 Orange body car for parts. A good frame and 2 good end caps. Same era and design.
The nice thing about the orange body tanker is the end caps just pop out. They are snapped in. Once removed from the frame, a weighted bar or heavier screwdriver tapping them from the inside and they pop out.
The 6465-85 is the same design, but for some reason the end caps are glued in. I have done this twice and in both cases both ends were glued on the ends of the tanker. Was this factory or zealous owners? In either case, the amount of glue used vs. what was needed was about 100x. I had to use a Dremel tool with a rough sanding disk to clean out the remains of the cap. It is a slow and careful process. I drill out the end cap with a lot of little holes and carefully remove the material with snipers. The Dremel tool comes in when you need to grind out what is glued to the body. Be very careful if you pry on the cap pieces. Some of the cap ring was not glued or lightly glued. If you pry too much the body itself can crack or break it doesn't take much. While grinding you need to avoid grinding into the body. Grind a little, check a lot.
In this case when I was done, the replacement end cap snapped in tight. No glue needed.
A couple of truck rivets and the rivet press with the correct press anvil/hammers and I have a no rust, breaks, cracks and 100% period 6465-85 tanker.
Glare in the picture makes it look more washed out than it is.
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