Rehabilitating a Broken 1:18 993 Turbo-Update 3/30-Body primed

[Cody60D]

Last week when I bought a 993 Turbo for $13, I had no guess what I was getting myself into. I saw in the photos that it was missing an engine cover and a turn signal. However, what I got was something on several different levels.



Oh? I was surprised to find that the package was left in the mailbox. I knew at worst I would have wasted $20 and had something to post in Diecast Disasters. Something in such a small box? Goodness.

Anyways, I soldiered on, splitting the box open like a fish.



Oookay? The only sign of a car is the weigh. Otherwise-had I been duped?



Oh-thank goodness. It's in better condition than I expected. It is down a headlight but has a whole side window that wasn't shown in the listing, with the other one broken half off after the smoker window.



BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH! The paint on the hood was beat.

During disassembly I used the youtube technique of a screwdriver and broke off the wheel attachment stub on one of the wheels. In an act of panic, I cut out the broken wheel stub.



Here's a "Glamour" shot of the rear of the car.

I then went to a hobby store and bought some 3/16 inch carbon tubing and cut off a tiny section and put it in the now clean hub. With some sand paper I was able to file it down to where it is almost flush with the wheel, so that it will fit like the old one did. Sadly I had to spend $8 on the BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH tubing!

Anyways, with that fire out I was able to continue on. Scanning through the hobby shop, I planned the repaint. I didn't want to repaint but seeing the chipped paint on the front and other scuffs justified a full strip down.

Hmm... what color? Since I didn't want to lose what the beautiful red interior offered me, I had to work around the colors that were already there. Royal blue? I found a beautiful can of Tamiya Racing White paint for this car. This will be my repaint I am focusing on legitimately doing right as opposed to spraycanning it and just having sorta glossy paint. One of the things that is good about diecast is that it's gonna be easy to polish it up compared to plastic!



Today, when I get home, this will be stripped off with epoxy remover now all the plastic is gone, and the wheels with a pretty bad degree of wheel melt will be cleaned off with oven cleaner. On the rear wheels I do need to know how to clean off the rear wheels without stripping the paint off the brake discs.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Cody60D

[Cody60D]

Update for 3/30/15

On Saturday, I stripped the paint off the body. I forgot how nasty that paint stripper was! It hisses and sizzles as it eats the paint away into little bits.

The more I went on and the more misfortune befell me (Acetone ate part of the wheels) I decided a pseudo-rat rod style 993 would be the best decision for this. I abandoned the straight-mod idea after I found that I didn't want to disassemble the back of my prized Porsche 993 Turbo to make a resin casting of the spoiler. I decided to spraypaint the wheels matte black and soldier on. I cut down the window frames on both sides since the windows were damaged on each side.

Painted wheel here-

Here's the primed body parts. I primed the body parts before I primed the body.

Here's the body as it's drying in a disused bird bath.