Hubley Racers # 5 - Restoration Continued

Thursday, March 29, 2012
Cold and Snowing!

Hubley Racers #5

Restoration Continued

     Hello everyone. Today's instalment returns to the 2 Hubley racers that I'm restoring. Any new task always has knowledge and experiences to be gained. And toy restoration is no different. When it comes to a new adventure, I like to read up on the subject, as well as venturing out on my own.  In this case, some mistakes are made, but that's what you learn from doing. So "let's get on with the show" as an old expression goes.

    I decided to paint the more-damaged and restored racer. If you remember, I'm just trying to sell the 2 for a slight profit. I had them listed, but I that I got was some interest in the 3 racers. I can sell them on E-Bay, but then who is going to want the rubber tires, the banged-up cars, and the axles?

   I painted the green racer with another coat of spray paint. The trouble with cold weather is that you need to paint indoors, and the only place is the garage. Unfortunately, the fumes start to build up. I let the cars stay in the garage for an hour, then placed them outdoors to aerate and lose the strong fumes and odours.

   I made an error in painting the red car, but its a good experience. I didn't have enough light in the garage, and I was too "lazy" to get a house light and extension cord, so that's how the mistake occurred! I sprayed too close, and also too much on the top of the red car. What happened is that there ended up too much paint on the top, and that created a different shine or gloss from the sides of the car. Please have a look at the photos below to see what I mean.

Continued Body Work Restoration 

Notice how the side of the car has more texture and is less smooth compared with the top of the car.

The solution will be to sand down the top,, make sure to use better lighting, and spray much less and more evenly!

Here is the red racer by itself.

It's not perfect, but whomever buys the 2 cars can continue where I finished.

The 2 Hubley # 5 racers side-by-side.

The 2 Hubley # 5 racers sanded down again.

The same items but photographed with a harser light for texture.

The Previous Work

Adding autobody filler (plastic putty) to the red car 

The car when it arrived

Start of the Tires and Axles

       As today was a cold and snowy day, it was easy to stay inside and do more than the usual amount of "toy work". Is that an oxymoron? 

The Tires and Axles as They Arrived

A Closer Look at the Tires and Axles

Another View of  More Tires and Axles

AThe first thing that I did with the tires was to wash them.

I used a fingernail brush, an old toothbrush, and some very fine steelwool.

I also used cotton swabs (ear cleaners)

The red earth took much longer than I thought. I had a bowl of soapy water, and used all of the above "tools" to clean the tires. However, It took me 3 times to remove the dirt, and still they could use more work!

I needed to use 1 of the silver-painted tires.

I used a lacquer thinner rather than a pint stripper, as I didn't want to "melt" the rubber tires.

I again used the cotton swabs to work the small areas (textures) of the tires.

Make sure to work in a well-ventilated (lots of fresh air) area, as the fumes are not good for you.

And be sure not to smoke! You might cause an explosion!

Alsop use latex gloves or non0-allergenic gloves. The reason is that the lacquer thinner may go through your skin, and you definitely do not want that!

Sandpaper and steel wool are good for removing rust from the axles.

In the above photo, I'm showing sandpaper in grades of 60-80-100-220-600.

I only worked with the 220 and 600 (the finer and smaller-grained sandpaper). The reason that I showed 5 different grades of sandpaper was to show you what they look like from the coarsest (biggest grains) to the finest (smallest grains).

You can also purchase even finer sandpaper to a grade of 1000, but that's not necessary.

How the sandpaper looks

rom left to right 60-80-100-220-600

I also used the sandpaper and my small files to try and remove as much of the red soil (dirt) as possible.

It's really amazing how that soil can stick to the rubber  and be so hard to remove.

 There is still that red soil even all of my hard work of scrubbing and filing!

Notice how the axle is nice and shiny!

So that's it for today.

As always, thanks for viewing my blog, and 

have a good morning, afternoon, or evening wherever you may be.