Hot Wheels Maserati Mistral restoration is complete!

I've spent some odds-and-ends of time finishing the Maserati restoration. It went fairly well except for chipping the paint during a test fit of the chassis, which required the body to be resprayed. 

At the end of the previous post in this series I was ready to strip the old, original paint from the body. I wasn't sure what to use for a paint stripper, so I decided just to drop the body in Super Clean and leave it overnight. Next morning the paint was soft and loose. Some scrubbing with a bristle brush under running water removed most of the paint. The photo on the right is the result. I then used a dental pick to clean paint from the panel lines and a few areas where the paint refused to let go. After that, I polished the body with a small wire brush attachment in my Dremel.

The chassis was a gloppy mess of thick, black enamel. I don't think the fine little springy axles had much spring as they appeared to be stuck in place. Although, the wheels did turn.

Some careful poking and prying with tweezers and an Xacto knife popped the axles free. The hardened enamel was then scraped from the wires. 

The wheelless chassis was then dropped in Super Clean and left for several hours to soak. The usual process with a scrub brush, dental picks, and the wire wheel was used to clean this piece. The front bumper also underwent the same cleanup process.

And this was the result. The wheels are considerably springier now that the wires were de-glopped. The chassis had a slight upward curve from when I pried it from the body back in the '70s, so I straightened it out with a pair of pliers. I also carefully straightened the wheels so they wouldn't look quite so misaligned. 

We've been lucky weather-wise and there was a mild day when I could spray the body outside. After several light coats this was the result.

After hardening for a few days I tried test fitting all the components and wound up chipping the paint on the front :-( So, a fix up and another round of painting, drying, and then spraying with several light coats of Testors Gloss Cote. 

Then there was another round of parts fitting and gluing the components in place.

The front bumper is attached to the chassis with a medium thickness superglue. The chassis is attached to what remains of the body pins with Weld Bond. 

There are still some gaps in the chassis to body fit, but nothing extreme. I only did the minimum amount of chassis and body bending as I didn't want to risk any serious damage. 

That blue image is what remained of the toy until a few weeks ago when I accidentally found the old chassis and bumper.

I didn't try any wheel restoration, so it's still got the 'racing aged' ones from it's speed demon career in the late '60s and early '70s :-)

I brush painted the red tail lights. I think the toy originally had the headlights painted silver, but I didn't try that on the restoration. After having to respray the body once, I didn't want to press my luck and have to do it again.

And that's that. A pleasant little project and an interesting diversion.