Broken Trunk Lid Repair

[Slick Shifter]

This adventure began about 10 years ago when the Donor fell into my lap out of an eBay junk box buy. It had the door handles and other fine details already carved off.

Then began a 9 year search to find an affordable twin to fix. This one popped up about a year ago. Trunk lid broken all the way through, a piece behind the left rear wheel missing from the body.

Between the two of them, enough to make one, with leftovers! The Perfect Candidate!

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While stripping the 60 years old paint The Plan was formulated.

Make a template of the underneath side of the Donor trunklid, using those big ejector pin marks as a guide line. Then superglue HALF of the template to HALF of the Patient's trunklid. Once the glue set for a few days, a soupy mix of Testors Red and Testors Liquid was applied to both halves of the trunklid crack. Then superglue applied to the other HALF of the template and then the template was pressed into the trunklid while the other hand pressed the upper quarter panels together. This took a solid 5 minutes on the digital clock. After letting go, i saw that both ends of the crack were slightly out of flush so i quickly made 2 more bridges and superglued them to hold those edges in position. The intent, of course, was to avoid using filler to correct a broken trunklid that was curved in both directions. This is what it looked like:

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After a few months for the Testors to harden,  little bridges were contoured slightly, with heat, to match the curve of the trunklid underside and glued in place with more Testors. Why not superglue? It's way too brittle for something like this. The blob at the trailing edge of the crack is a piece of fat sprue that was heated up and pushed in to deform and match that spot. Then it was pulled off and glued into place. After 5 patches were allowed to set up, the template was ground away and the 6th bridge piece was glued into place.

About the same time, the break line in the quarter panel was straightened and squared up. Then a patch cut from the Donor, finessed and glued into place. It still needs some reinforcing on the inside.

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After several more months for the patches to set, the surplus glue on the topside of the trunklid was carved off then block-sanded. It took only a few minutes. It came out pretty good, IMHO. BTW, that's soapy water.

 

 

Edited December 5, 2019 by Slick Shifter

[moparfarmer]

Looks like you're a pretty good body man..Lots of filler primer(Duplicolor,not tamiya,because of not being think enough) some nice prep and you are good to go..GREAT SAVE BUDDY.

[ChrisBcritter]

Nice save! That early Jo-Han plastic is supposed to be pretty resistant to glue; did you find that to be true?

Looking forward to more. What are your plans for it?

[Slick Shifter]

10 hours ago, moparfarmer said:

Looks like you're a pretty good body man..Lots of filler primer(Duplicolor,not tamiya,because of not being think enough) some nice prep and you are good to go..GREAT SAVE BUDDY.

Thank You , Wayne.

Because i'm a cheapskate who don't like wasting paint, what i normally do when filling with primer is to first tape off along each side of the repair area then spray some primer into an aerosol can cap and wait for it to thicken. When it's 'just right' i'll spray the same primer into the crack then take a fine brush and dab the thickened primer into the crack while the sprayed primer is still plenty soft. That keeps from having to clean a lot of primer buildup out of the panel grooves. Of course, it takes a few weeks for a heavy dose of primer to harden but there are enough other irons in the fire that make waiting easy.

[Slick Shifter]

8 hours ago, ChrisBcritter said:

Nice save! That early Jo-Han plastic is supposed to be pretty resistant to glue; did you find that to be true?

Thanks, Chris.

Yep, old Jo-Han plastic is plenty hard. Drop one and they shatter. That hurts. 1958-1960 AMT plastic hardens up and tans if it has never been painted. It's a little shocking to see the difference in the surfaces when you strip the paint off a PARTIALLY painted 1958-60 model car from back in the day.  Something changed with the styrene formulation for 1961, it seems. After that they just got harder and brittler if they were never painted.

I should've mentioned that i brush-primed the surfaces with lacquer thinner a few times to soften them up a little before i glued them.

[LL3 Model Worx]

That is some solid repair work right there! That is awsome.

[Slick Shifter]

1 hour ago, LL3 Model Worx said:

That is some solid repair work right there! That is awsome.

Thanks, LL#3.

It's fun to exercise one's skills every so often, isn't it?

The kit version of this model regularly sells for $125 and up, already built, even the customized ones. And there are far more (heavily warped) dealer promos in circulation than kits. Neither has ever been reissued since 1959 and the kit version is real hard to find, not boogered up. Because the kit instructions and box art encouraged kids to customize the heck out of them.

This kit HAD to be rare to begin with. Who but a well-meaning Grandma would've bought a FOUR-DOOR model car kit to give as a gift?

Have a Merry Christmas!

 

[LL3 Model Worx]

1 hour ago, Slick Shifter said:

Thanks, LL#3.

It's fun to exercise one's skills every so often, isn't it?

The kit version of this model regularly sells for $125 and up, already built, even the customized ones. And there are far more (heavily warped) dealer promos in circulation than kits. Neither has ever been reissued since 1959 and the kit version is real hard to find, not boogered up. Because the kit instructions and box art encouraged kids to customize the heck out of them.

This kit HAD to be rare to begin with. Who but a well-meaning Grandma would've bought a FOUR-DOOR model car kit to give as a gift?

Have a Merry Christmas!

 

Yes it is a blast... I'm currently pushing my skills to the limit trying to fuse to two completely different cars together. May not be able to lol...

And my grandma has actually gotten me a 4 door kit...lol!

I'm glad you were able to fix this one without being terribly invasive, very nice.

You and yours have a very merry Christmas as well.

[restoman]

That is some pretty nice work, right there... 

 

[Slick Shifter]

11 hours ago, restoman said:

That is some pretty nice work, right there... 

Thanks, Mike.  Am hoping to see some other ancient saves from time to time.