All of the aluminium parts on the model needed cleaning with Brasso metal polish, especially those which seemed to be coated in a layer of concrete dust. 

The parts of the large combustion chamber tanks in front of the bells were all loose because they are only dressing and not structurally sound items. The domes are EMA (a.k.a. Plastruct) products and the middle cylinder is solid wood. The small bracket at the front that connects to the rear cage is actually soldered to a length of ¼" brass tube that runs all the way into the base of the engine bell, so the combustion chamber just has a hole drilled down the centre and hangs on it. Most of the thin piping running over the surface of these parts is just plastic coated wire, bent to shape and simply pressed into position. These "plumbing" tubes and parts around the engine section on the model as they exist today barely resemble the configuration that was in place when the model was originally built. This area of the model underwent extensive modifications throughout the run of the series. 
 
 

Small Art Works tech note... Below is a picture of an unfinished 44" Eagle replica  under construction by Small Art Works for a customer,  showing what the "plumbing" or piping configuration would have looked like when the #1 Eagle model was originally built. (Special thanks to Chris Trice and Daniel Prud'Homme for the information necessary to accurately construct this replica.) Now, back to David Sisson with his restoration article...

One point of interest design wise is that the top and bottom chambers don't fit properly without alteration, something I discovered when I built a replica and thought I'd gone wrong. The middle core butts up against the supports running between the rear cage and the cross member frame, so two deep groves are cut into the wood to allow the chambers to fit in place. 

The two smaller tanks, above and below, are again EMA domes but this time glued to a central brass disc that is soldered to a connecting tube. The pipes coming out of the front and rear are just lightweight plastic tubes and bends which together with many of the parts on the shelves inside the cages can still be found in the EMA catalogue. 

With the rear corridor section and vertical thrusters removed, the bottom framework fell out quickly followed by the small right hand side fuel tanks. The model had obviously received a heavy blow to this area in the past that had twisted the right engine out of line and broke the cross member support. So many pieces of pipe were loose on the back of the cage that I thought it might all fall apart, so I quickly identified the most important connections and soldered them back together again to give the unit some rigidity while I then attempted to straighten it all up.

One by one all the broken joints were cleaned of accumulated paint and soldered back together again, a job made slightly tricky because I couldn't remove the plastic and wood combustion tanks which did get a little bit singed in a couple of places. All the parts fitted back in position, only one piece of brass pipe was missing and had to be replaced, but it proved impossible to completely straighten out the unit and there's still a few kinks in there.

Rear section almost ready for painting. The wooden combustion chambers had a number of splits running along their surfaces which needed filling and then smoothing over and quite a bit of loose paint that needed chipping off. Note the four notches on the cages upper most length of brass pipe. All four cage sections were numbered in this manner by the original model maker.

With the frame now fixed I turned my attention to the shoulder pods. These are made from wooden blocks that are clad in thin perspex and then detailed with grey ABS plastic sheeting and kit parts. Over the years the action of the glue and paint has caused some of the thin perspex panels to warp and lift away from the wood and several just fell off.

In the past I had noticed, in some publicity photographs, that the landing gear assemblies were occasionally twisted and so I thought they were damaged. However these parts are simply pushed into a hole, so they can easily rotate or be pulled out, and were just held in position with double sided tape.

Each pod is partially hollowed out by four large holes that are covered by a plasticard plate again attached using tape. In the right hand hole you can just see a brass tube that runs into the back of the attitude thruster block which can also be rotated and pulled out.

On the left hand side of the pod you can see the wooden support that plugs into the frame. All of these are a bit loose but this one (front left) has been sanded down in size, possibly for the episode 'The Exiles' when it was plugged into the 2nd 44 inch Eagle model, and it is now covered in masking tape to make it fit properly. Also note that the four small lower corners are just painted wood and are not covered in plastic.