'60 DeSoto promo

[62rebel]

Bought a promo with a heavy coat of what appeared to be house paint once I got it in my hands, so I apprehensively consigned it to the purple pond for a couple of days... man, what a mess. The paint sloughed off pretty easily for the most part, but it took about four hours of picking, scraping, and brush-scrubbing to get the rest off and clean out the gaps... and it seemed like the purple stuff brought up a rough texture in a few areas, necessitating some judicious sanding and adzing to smooth it out... then, I decided to touch up the slight areas of flash around the wheelwells and the joints atop the doors, when I got chips coming off the plastic instead of curls... believe me, fifty-six year old styrene is BRITTLE... cleaning mold lines and flash became something along the lines of open-heart surgery for a while! Thankfully, I got her cleaned up and today I shot a primer coat. Too bad JoHan used the old full-frame chassis plate instead of the unibody plate it should have.... I'd love to have something slightly better underneath it, but it's not going to bother me too much since the hood is molded shut.

[Lizard Racing]

sounds like an oldie but a goodie.

[StevenGuthmiller]

If it is truly a promo, you have to be very careful about stripping them.

The majority of the older ones are not made of styrene.

They are an acetate plastic that can react badly to some types of strippers that work well for styrene.

That may have been part of the reason why it reacted the way it did.

Hope it all works out for you.

 

Steve

[Lunajammer]

I had the exact same experience stripping a '60 Desoto kit. When I did mine in the 90's, brake fluid was the stripper of choice and I blamed that for making the plastic brittle and rough. Some fine pieces actually crumbled. But you used something else, so now I'm more inclined to blame the plastic.

[ChrisBcritter]

In particular, oven cleaner is a big no-no with acetate.

[gtx6970]

If its a metal chassis , its true promo and they are NOT stryene

 

 

[disabled modeler]

Some promos have a plastic,metal,and friction chassis and you do have to be very careful what you use to strip them with....I striped a 60 Ford HT once the plastic cracked and warped badly ruined it.  The older promos had a strange weak plastic that was known to warp and get very brittle...shame.  I am a nut about them.

[espo]

Had the same problem a few years ago. I found a '61 Valiant that I built back then. Wanted to strip it and redo the paint. The body had the same reaction. This was a regular AMT model. I think any model more than say 20 years old you just have to sand it by hand. I was left with a body that was more like a potato chip than anything else.    

[62rebel]

It seems to be doing great, thankfully; it wasn't exactly cheap... I have an old Falcon that I was rebuilding a few years back that was molded in a dark blue plastic, very shiny and gave off an odd odor when I was cutting the hood loose from the shell.... that one was equally scary at the time

[StevenGuthmiller]

Had the same problem a few years ago. I found a '61 Valiant that I built back then. Wanted to strip it and redo the paint. The body had the same reaction. This was a regular AMT model. I think any model more than say 20 years old you just have to sand it by hand. I was left with a body that was more like a potato chip than anything else.    

I strip vintage kits all of the time with very few issues.

I think if it is a styrene kit, it's just more of an "individual" thing.

The only old kit that I've had brittleness issues with in the past few years was an MPC '65 Dodge Monaco, & that was expected because supposedly all of them were molded in gold plastic & as a result there were problems with them.

I've built about 30 kits in the past three years, all of them produced before 1966 & at least 2/3 of them have spent a few days in the "soup".

No problems what so ever.

 

Steve

[Edsel-Dan]

I gpt a Straight decent 61 Bonneville convertible promo

it had been painted Blue & red

I dropped it in the strip tank, "Wesley's Bleeche Whyte"

Sadly, she Softened, twisted, And even shrunk!!

Boot cover is not 1/32 or 1/43,

The body rubberized mostly on the right side

 

I have since found a Kit convert, and that one stripped fine.

I just need more parts for her than I did for the Promo!!!

[62rebel]

I've sanded only one body ever to remove the paint, and only because I was then stationed at Great Lakes and couldn't use many "chemicals" in the barracks... it was a Challenger promo that had been brush painted, given to me by one of my classmates in a huge box of old kits and parts. Another body in that bunch had such hard paint on it that I could CHIP it off.