As she was never painted, over the years the old girl has suffered from the elements. The plan is to clean up the steel parts and cover them with a satin lacquer to protect against any further corrosion. For surface rust like this, my go to is Jenolite Original. These pictures show the process from rusty to clean, which took around ten minutes for this bin lid.
This is the condition of the piece before I started. I'm using a cheap A4 craft storage box as a work area as the process can cause the fluid to be flicked up and it's quite obnoxious stuff:
A small amount of Jenolite was poured onto the piece and a small wire brush used to remove the surface rust, to allow the deeper pieces to be covered by the fluid. Gloves and goggles are a must when using a wire brush:
This is how it looks after a couple of applications and brushing sessions. I also used a brass pencil brush to go over the worst parts, as you can wind in the wire strands, which makes it more aggressive.
A close up of how it looks once cleaned, rinsed and dried.
Before the lacquer coats, it needs a couple of folds straightening out.
Being the prototype, the bins are machined from aluminium rather than the steel ones of the production run. These bin lids were held in with cap head bolts, glued into the holes in the tops of the bins. I'm going to see if I can use rivets instead, so that both sides of the piano hinge match.
Whilst looking for pictures, I found her run around the Dunkeswell Test Track was still on the Armortek YouTube channel:
As she was the prototype, I think it's fitting to use her as a test bed for some planned elevation and recoil upgrades.
She also seems to be running with a Comet sound card, so I need to source a Centurion one instead.
Adrian.
