Promotional rescue: The 1957 Ford Custom 300 sedan

[Maindrian Pace]

In between big-effort builds, I like to wind down a bit with a nice, low pressure antique promo restoration. Often for friends, (good friends) these roll onto the bench periodically. One friend collects '50s Ford promos that he couldn't get when he was a kid, but can now. These include every color offered of the rare '57 Ford sedan promo. Black is the rarest color, they almost never show up for sale. He finally found one, but it had been customized and was rough. I should have taken a few pics of it assembled, but forgot. It had the glass and interior from a pink '58 Edsel promo, (these sedans didn't have interiors) painted wide whitewalls, painted side trim and gold insert, and at one point had mirrors, spot lights, antennas, and mud flaps glued to it. Must have been a real doll.

He gave me a green sedan promo to demonstrate the proper color scheme. First order of business was to remove the glass from the green car and use it to vacuform a new unit for the black one. I dyed it light green with glass dye from Hobby Lobby.

Trimmed to fit:

That turned out to be the easy part. The problem with the old warp-crazy acetate promos is that the acetate plastic is very fragile and nothing that I tried could strip the paint without ruining the surface of the plastic. And I mean nothing. So all of the silver paint had to be painstakingly scraped and sanded off of the trim, including the heavy brush painted gold, which turned out to cover a heavily painted red color, and then the trim had to be sanded and polished with a polishing kit to bring the shine back, and all had to be done without obliterating any of the details. It took days. I called the owner up to grouch about that, which seemed to make it go smoother.

All of the bodywork to the glued areas had to be done without stripping the original white paint, including sink marks to the trunk from the Edsel windows being glued in. All black plastic areas had to be sanded and polished, Then it had to be masked off twice, first for the gold insert:

Edited August 19, 2014 by Maindrian Pace

[Maindrian Pace]

And then for the white:

Tamiya fine primer, followed by Testors Wimbledon White, a good match for Colonial white:

Meanwhile, the chrome was sent off to Chrome Tech USA:

And the heavy lifting was done. Here's why the acetate was so popular back in the day; it was very shiny right out of the mold, and shines up like mad with very little effort.

[Maindrian Pace]

That Tamiya masking tape is amazingly good stuff.

And finally,

Now maybe I can work on something that I own.

-MJS

[slusher]

Excellent work and result..

[1930fordpickup]

Very nice.

[blunc]

you have some very lucky friends, that seems like a LOT of work.

nice save/restoration.

[Danno]

Great save, Mike!

[DynoMight]

Real good save! Great job.

[Maindrian Pace]

Thanks Gentlemen, I have two other promos to do, but next up is a '77 Ford pickup kit that's been in the planning stages for some time.

-MJS

[thatz4u]

Mike, nice restoration, wow

[unclescott58]

Very nice job Mike.

Scott

[Maindrian Pace]

Thanks Al and Scott.

-MJS

[David G.]

Excellent restoration!

David G.

[Ramfins59]

That looks really great. It could use some BMF for the window and side trim and handles, etc...

[disabled modeler]

Very nice....I love restoring them myself....great work!

[futurattraction]

Fantastic job, Mike...!

[JTalmage]

I agree. Looks fantastic but it definitely needs some BMF on the trim, and some white walls. that would really set it off.

[Maindrian Pace]

Thanks guys. It was detailed with silver paint and painted wide whitewalls when it was given to me to restore, the owner wanted it brought back to stock. On a $300-$500 promo, you just don't do BMF or any other detailing, you get the Modelhaus straightened resin version and do it to that.

-MJS