Vintage Hi Lux Restoration

[SuperChamp82 743]

Hi,

Does anyone have any recommendations for renovating the metal parts on a vintage (58028) Hi Lux ? 

I’m thinking increasing grades of wet and dry paper to remove knicks / rust then high grade polish with a soft dremmel pad ?

Thanks,

[Shodog 1835]

It will give your hilux a shiny, blingy look. The frame and cross braces are decent alloy and will look nice polished.  The low grade alloy Tamiya used for the axles and tranny take a bit more work to polish up to a high shine. From now on you’ll always need to touch up the polishing. 

[Backlash 481]

I have been wondering if a Rock Tumbler would do a reasonable job of cleaning up and restoring the "as new" look to the pot metal parts without polishing them ..

It seems that you can use them with various media and cleaning solutions to get the desired results..

[kevinb120 64]

Here's a rather definitive thread on what it takes to restore SRB parts of all types to the 9's 

https://tamiyabase.com/articles/53-how-to/188-srb-metal-cleaning-restoration

I just did my F150 but instead of the final glass bead/blasting steps, which is not easy to get done for most, I went ahead and painted the cast cases after full cleaning with sonic/degreasers/stainless brushes to pretty good effect.  The harder cast pieces like the uprights and suspension arms came out like new just with careful cleaning/stainless brushes.  If you look at the front end pic of my F150, the cast pot metal parts are painted, the original upper control arms cleaned, and the lower control arms are brand new re-re parts.  You can't tell the difference from the 35+ yo upper arms. May want to consider just cleaning and painting the pot metal sand cast parts if they're anything like the SRB cases.  I did them with light dusting coats, almost dry on the last few to keep the slight 'rough' texture. The cases look 95% or better compared to my brand new re-re cases.  A stainless brush is a bit softer then a carbon steel brush, so they don't scratch up the harder cast parts so much, if at all. 

If the gearbox is that same hard finish as most vintage metal tamiya suspension components it should clean up, but if it's that 'rough' cast finish like srb cases, they never come out to new with just chemical/mechanical cleaning. 

https://www.tamiyaclub.com/forum/index.php?/topic/86849-finally-found-an-xlt-ranger-srb-to-be-restored-with-a-bit-of-sacrilege/

 

Cast supports painted, suspension tubes and metal body post cleaned, light sanded and liquid metal polish by hand(not to a chrome look, but brushed), lower arms new, upper arms and knuckles just cleaned.