www.Quarterscalelegends.com

That dreaded fender crack, oddly cut fender Wells, melted plastic from muffler, pop rivet holes, glue and bizarre repairs that seem to fail before you are even done repainting it...
Nothing more depressing than finding that rare quarter scale body and it’s basically junk.. this is the normal thing for us now.
Years ago I was forced by my work to take a bunch of classes on plastic repair... so I’m going to share some tricks to give you guys some hope before you fold another body in half shoving it in the trash can.

Fender crack and poorly cut fender well....
Oversize the wheel opening and install a new opening using 1/16” ABS plastic . Tack in place using soldering iron. Don’t stress the small crack at top of fender

Make sure everything is sanded good... use 3m 08239 TPO plastic repair to glue the backside. And then using a dremel dig a trench in the seam. Then coat outside seam with TPO .. allow 4 hours before sanding and watch your heat.

Sand TPO smooth with 220 d/a (watch your heat) use only paper thin filler if needed.. but no filler is best

Here are a few other pics

steve g:

Thanks for posting these 'how to' photos. Not many people take the time and trouble to save these old ABS model car bodies. Plenty of them have been repaired with pop rivets and sheet metal. I rescued one which was a complete disaster, pop riveted A pillars, fenders like jigsaw puzzle pieces held together on the reverse side by sheet metal, missing chunks of rear bumper, etc. I used the soldering iron method you describe. It worked out quite well. The body is in storage now because I took a break from the project.

Kaye

Kaye wrote: ↑December 21st, 2021, 11:05 am steve g:

Thanks for posting these 'how to' photos. Not many people take the time and trouble to save these old ABS model car bodies. Plenty of them have been repaired with pop rivets and sheet metal. I rescued one which was a complete disaster, pop riveted A pillars, fenders like jigsaw puzzle pieces held together on the reverse side by sheet metal, missing chunks of rear bumper, etc. I used the soldering iron method you describe. It worked out quite well. The body is in storage now because I took a break from the project.

Kaye

Did you ever complete this project?

Hi steve g:

The body repairs to my Ford Thunderbird are mostly complete. I stopped short of removing the decals, etc., as i sort of fell in love again with the patina of the body, the 'dinged up old race car look'. I put the body shell into storage. I'll dig it out again next summer after I finish working on my 65 inch Apache boat. I've been making a new hatch out of ABS for the Apache, it was going well until I put too much heat into it with a soldering iron. I tried to recover it by filling the heat affected areas with an ABS slurry that I mixed up (ABS chips and acetone), but the whole thing has become way too heavy, so I'm starting it over. I have a proper 3M mask that I wear for messing with the slurry.