860GT alloy gas tank badge/plate preparation

[rjk40]

I purchased two of them from Steve to replace the cracked and faded plastic originals. They are unfinished, and so they will require finish work.
I primed them with etching primer:



Then I polished the lettering:



Then I carefully masked the lettering, and painted the piece with VHT chassis gloss black:



Teh, finally, I removed themasking and redefined the lettering edges with a toothpick. Results are quite satisfactory:



The only caveat is that the studs on the backside are a bit small for the tank holes, so i must find suitable shim material. That's better than if the studs were too thick, which would be a pain to trim.

[rjk40]

One more time.

I have put photos, with brief comments, on the following Flickr website:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/124760992 ... 3738916316

As mentioned in my previous posting (with unsuccessful posting of pics, now on the Flicker page above...),
the plates arrive unfinished.
I chose to polish the lettering and paint the background gloss black, to match the tank.

Polishing was done with, in order, using my trusty Dremel at medium/slow speed, and cloth polishing wheel:
1. Tripoli (brown) Rouge
2. White Rouge
3. Semichrome polish

Masking the lettering was the most challenging, but the results were worth the effort.

I primed the whole thing with etching primer, then polished the lettering.
Then, I masked the lettering.
Then, I painted the whole thing with gloss black to match the tank. and removed the masking.
I must now find a way to tighten up the fit of the pegs into the holes in the tank, to insure that the plates stay tightly in the holes in the tank.
I could probably put a dab of epoxy into the holes, but that is a bit scary.

I hope that this info is of some use.

Regards,
Richard in Florida