anybody have recommendation for a toy restorer?

[ld26]

co-worker of mine said he was thinking of sending pics of his old tonka truck to Rick's Restorations, considering what I've heard on this board told him probably not best place to go,

anybody have a recommendation?  we are in the New York area...

Thanks!

[Eric]

I'm sure there are sites dedicated to restoring metal toys and or Tonka trucks.. I use to have a site that repro'd decals for Tonkas... maybe someone remembers it?
But I'm sure he could find every piece for the toy and could probably have it painted or he could even paint it himself...
Rick's will just contract it out anyway and charge him serious $$$ for it...

[Eric]

Found this site...

http://www.toydecals.com/Toy_Decal_Pages/tonka5.htm

[ld26]

cool, thanks Eric, I'll pass it along...

[bcharlton]

I always thought toys were a little like signs, you don't restore them.  Any old toy collectors out there?

BC

[MaineT]

Original paint is a huge part of the value, but if its toast then it won't hurt it. If its a good original, it's not like soda machines, you will always get more for the clean original!

[scalebowler]

I agree that if the truck is not in bad shape then don't restore it. I've worked on a couple of tonka trucks and they are not too hard to restore and fun. Biggest thing is make sure you keep track of the little parts and the important parts because even though you can find them on ebay it always seems the one part you need is the expensive one (for example I had to pay 20 bucks for a grille for the truck I'm using for my steam tonka truck project)

Here's one that I'm working on right now. Not done yet but I did have to patch a hole in the roof that showed up after I removed the rust and I lost a headlight when I picked the darn thing up but it's not looking too bad so far (not a professional job but it should look nice when I'm done)



And here is what the truck looks like as of now (can't even tell where the hole in the roof next to the rear roof support was)

[ld26]

good info, thanks the replies guys, much appreciated, I'll pass it along, not sure how much work my co-worker can do on his own, scalebowler may have to open up a tonka repair shop, ha