Having a few Faller car system spares to hand I thought I'd have a bash at building rather than converting a chassis, this was based round a AAA 1.5v battery holder as I tend to use these rather than the 3v Faller ones as it slows them down to a more reasonable speed.

So add in a switch and a reed switch and bar onboard charging you have one that'll do the same thing as a Faller, the batteries are easy to swap over and you just pop a freshly recharged battery in rather than having to charge the vehicle itself.

So based round a Base Toys Bristol LD body a few bits of plasticard some Faller bits and battery box, we have a working vehicle.

The chassis is shown below

It's shown with 'borrowed' rear wheels, the biggest improvement I think you can do looks wise with buses using Faller conversions is to use the bigger truck wheels from the Faller MAN lorry, they look much better than the HO bus wheels.

So does it work?

Yep......

Quick, very badly shot test video....

I'm currently investigating some cheaper Faller replacement motor/gearboxes, so add a steering axle wheels, reed switch etc it should be possible to do a very basic Faller type chassis like this for sub £35.....we'll see.......