Saw this on ebay and thought it was pretty cool looking. http://www.ebay.com/itm/1971-Maveri...06422?pt=Diecast_Vehicles&hash=item256f8e99d6
First one of those i"ve seen. Neat, but I don't buy them anymore. Gave most of mine away as door prizes at the Gathering.
It is a "Custom" trick. This is how you do it. Strip the decals off with nail polish remover first Strip the body with "Stripeeze". you can get this at Home Depot The polish the body with a polish cloth and some "Fritz" The following is copied from another forum that I am on : looks good try a 2000 grit wet sand paper till smooth and usre some flitz meral polish and you'll get results like thgis - MAC. End: Copied portion I just didnt want anyone thinking this was one released by mattel. I still think they are cool and I will probably be trying one pretty soon. I have a buddy who has a polishing wheel so we will see what happens. Bobo
BTW if you do this you need to clear coat it. If you do not it will oxidize just like any other pc of aluminum or zink that is left to the open air. Bobo
Just one of those things people do to make the Hot Wheel look different so others go "ooh, I gotta have it". I wouldn't spend the money for it, but somebody might. It is a cool trick though. The guy listing it said it was "triple plated".
You could strip one down, polish it a little and then hit it with some Krylon X Metal paint (basicly color tinted clear) to simulate the old Hotwheels Spectraflame colors. I did a Thunderbolt and added redlines but I put one too many coats of paint on and it didn't turn out that good.
The castings shown in the pics that Bobo posted are vintage HW castings and will polish up like that. Shoot them in a candy paint and they are amazing. This was standard procedure for the first four years of HWs, and one of the reasons that I got way too involved in restoring them for a while, until sanity sunk back in. I doubt that you can take a modern HWs casting and polish it up to that level. I believe the modern materials are a metal that is a few grades down from that. I have stripped a few and not been happy at all with them. The car in the eBay auction, in my opinion, would be plated. I know a couple of guys that plate the vintage ones prior to painting. Sometimes the old castings get a dark staining in spots (toning), and plating is a great way to save them ... one guy deals with a local automotive-style plater, when he piles up enough pieces for the plater's minimum run. The other has his own small rig to plate small parts at his house. This involves a fish tank, car battery, electrode plates ... lots of trial and error.
I just did this one and all i did was take it apart and soak the body in break fluid then buffed the hell out of it with my Dremel... I think it came out great.
Can I just toss one in my bullet polishing vibrator with Flitz and walnut? Is that coarse enough to take the paint off?
You will need to remove the paint first. The casing polisher will get it pretty shiny, but it will still need clean up and a bit more polishing to get it mirror-like. I used a casing polisher with corn cob media and metal polish in it. It would take probably 4-6 hours with most vintage HWs cars. I never tried walnut, I would think it is rougher than corn cob.
