Restore Plastic Badges on Your Car

badges we don't need no stinking badges quota  line actually misquator line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madres this week we're talking  about badges that we ain't got no of when we bought the 75 Torino I thought for sure that this  badge here that goes on the fuel door was missing from the car and it was kind of a bummer because I  thought ah I'll just go out onto eBay and find one they aren't out there and after the break  we're going to talk about what you can do to make a badges look bett

er than the  badges look now the best I can do [Music] for 45 years the Miller family and the  dedicated staff at autocrafters have been here helping you to restore your dream  forward thank you for your support here's to another 45 years of delivering parts for your  Falcon Fairlane F-100 Galaxy Maverick and Pinto all right so a badge like this is a plastic  badge that goes inside the insert on the gas door on our 75 Gran Torino I will say that a lot  of times these parts are missing off of thi

ngs like fuel doors just simply because you're  opening and closing that thing all the time it's right there in the gas line these things can  get damaged or even just lost because the glue on the back will let go I've got a tad bit of glue  still left on here that I'm going to show you how I remove this may not be the best way to do it but  it it involves my old trusty big pocket knife and I go in and I just pick the glue out of there if  you get lucky a lot of times it will actually pick the g

lue out from the whole area and you'll also  pick up the paint as well or the primer my goal on this badge is to keep as much of that Chrome  as is in there and for areas where I do not keep that Chrome I'm going to be using this thing which  is a Malto liquid chrome my experience with these kind of paints is it it would probably be okay  in here because there's not going to be something everybody's going to be scrutinizing but if you're  trying to use this stuff on a lot of different areas usua

lly it's not chromy it looks kind of  like Chrome but doesn't really look like Chrome so the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to  show you briefly before we go any further how I go through and take this stuff off I try to keep it  away from me call me crazy but I don't want to cut my finger off Jackson would probably like to see  that but I really don't want to do it I've already cut myself with this thing yesterday once you'll  see how it picked that little bit of material off one thing

I'll say is if you can see it that is  actually either a very bright silver paint that Ford put down on the backside of this before they  put the primer down or it is an actual thin thin metal that they put down in here I'm betting  more on a paint for the background because this actually has moving from Back to Front you  have a primer layer you have a silver layer and then you have a a clear red that goes next to  the plastic that's your final stopping point for paint we're going to go into al

l that  and how we work that here in just a minute I'm just going to kind of show this and then I'll  work this off camera to get the rest of it up because I want to move on to some of the other  things that we do in order to take this apart and get everything where we can  actually just make everything a common color I don't like going  in and doing these kind of things and just working on a portion of it  because I find what can happen is you can end up with it looking modeled  in the final if

you don't get all the glue and stuff off this and get  down to the right down to the clear there's a Japanese guy that restores  tail lights I think he's Japanese he may be Chinese and he does a fantastic job  of this kind of stuff but he's not here today I'm assuming he's either in China or Japan  somewhere I'm really trying hard to just pick the um the glue off of here this almost looks  like it was put on with weatherstrip adhesive because I have a next step that I'm going to  go to you'll k

now too that I'm trying I'm not worried so much about taking the center out  of this I'm trying to leave as much of that chrome paint that's down in there on here as  I can so I'm really trying to work pretty hard to not go too deep with this um it's going to be  kind of hard to see but there's areas even where the black is supposed to go down all the way into  that bottom so I'm assuming that what they did in painting it was the Chrome for the letters went  down first then they painted the blac

k and then they did the red that's just an assumption on my  part but I'm going to stop with this in just a second here all right so what to do to clean the  paint and primer off the back side of your badge I went out on the internet and there were like seven  or eight different things that seemed plausible I tried two of them uh and the two the one that I've  settled on that seems to work the best is in fact acetone acetone is going to be your best bet for  doing this because the acetone seems

to pull up the primer it'll also pull up the red paint but it  doesn't seem to be damaging any of the Plastics on here I would advise you to test first before you  go and start doing a lot of work make sure it's not damaging the plastic sometimes you can use a  product like acetone and it will go in and make a mess of the plastic and then you'll have to sand  buff and then cut and buff and then go in and make sure that everything's shiny which you would use  a product like this is a metal polish

that we use it's called autosol that's what you'd want to  do in the final I'll show you that at the very end of this as well so what I'm going to do is I'm  going to pop my top on my acetone here get out of the way my camera guy yes I know I use my knife  on that so excuse me here oh I got a flat blade now what I use for this is Q-tips um because  they're cheap and they're easy to use and they'll get the job done with what we're trying to do here  I'm going to put my glasses on not because I'm

a safety Maven which I kind of am but because  I can't see a dang thing as I've gotten older and so what you're going to do with this  is you're going to take the acetone and rub your work area check it every once in a while  make sure you're not getting a lot of acetone over on your borders here usually on a Ford  badge those borders are inset so it will it's not really a problem if you get something on  there but you can see that's just knocking right through that primer coat and down through

  the Chrome I'm guessing that's chrome paint also look at your badge for direction this badge  has a raised area that is more prominent going this way and a deeper Edge going this way so  I'm going to try to keep going horizontal on my movements to clean everything up in there inside  of here is a little more problematic to get that out of there with acetone you're going to have  to refresh pretty quickly because it is just not going to stay on your Q-tip for very long or your  swab tell I'm an

old guy because I'm using the word Q-tip and for cotton swab where this really  comes into play on the Torino line is like if you've got a set of sport Badges and the plastic's  in good shape and it's not cracked and crazed those badges in good shape on the internet are  running somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 for a full set I'm going to go ahead and finish this  thing up and get it ready to go toward paint off camera this gives you an idea what I'm talking  about how quickly that acetone

will get in there and clean these things up all right I have gone in  and used this paint pen I will say that it looks pretty good the color comes out pretty nice the  problem I have is it's just not the same as the original chrome on these letters I do not want  to go in and try to take the Chrome out of these letters I've tried to keep as much of it in there  as I possibly could but it's not really as nice now what I'm going to do is I'm going to flip  this over see if Jackson can catch this i

n the camera you can see it's a fairly bright silver  it's a nice it's a nice color the big problem I have with it is that it's just not quite doing it  on this side it's a little darker for some reason than the absolute Chrome so they must have put  a foil down inside of the letters somehow when they were putting this together so I'm going  to go ahead and put some more of this in and kind of finish this up not exactly what I'd hoped  for but I'm not one of those guys that's going to say oh thi

s works great it looks wonderful it's  it's just okay at some points you might would want to go in and try to find another badge but  what I'm doing with this or what I do with these is these are really fine line pins you can  see the point on here is really really tiny and what I do is I just run it down inside of  there squish it because this is an applicator type oh so I've got to clean that up but that'll  show you how bright that is right there get my friendly applicators here where  I to h

ave had the red paint there that would be pretty awesome but I  do not have the red paint there go back to my acetone and clean that out of the  center and then we're going to now move on to doing the black because I see that as being the  next stage of this badge here on our Torino badge if you're not willing to look stupid for your  work are you really working these are a seven time magnification set of goggles that my dad had the  Lord knows how many years and I have now inherited them I can'

t see anything unless I get like  right here so I am going to be right literally right on top of my work uh working on this but  I wanted to show you this isn't a lot of fun um when you're doing these kind of  things you're going to be having to get right up on what you're doing and  these are a really good way to do that you must control your breathing  all that sort of stuff I'm gonna try to get over on this Edge  without getting the paint on the red section because we pulled paint off and  we

were working on it before if I do get some on there I can go  in and just kind of scrape it out with my finger it doesn't look bad on  this side especially with these things off see guys if you built models when you were a kid and you just didn't kit bash and try to  throw everything together as quick as you could to see what it looked like that's where  this kind of thing really starts to pay off because uh yeah it's really tiny detail work one thing you can do when you're putting the paint  d

own is you can actually go and backside it like this and scrub toward the inside of the lettering  and that will help make it where it'll fill out to that outside edge it's really hard to put paint  on a paintbrush with these glasses on I can't see anyway there's just gonna be a ton of fun like  this you're going to be going through and doing this all the way around these letters Wherever  You Picked paint off when you were cleaning it you must have nerves of Steel to do  this I'm not going to c

ontinue to show you this it's basically just going  in and doing this around all the letters all the way down to the sides of them on the  T on the Torino always look at your badges to see what you've got and I'm gonna have to clean  that out now because I tagged it with the brush but this just gives you an idea of  what I'm talking about when you're doing these kind of badges all right I'm  going in and I'm applying the red now and I'm trying to get the paint thin enough  that it won't uh cause

a problem with not being able to see the silver that we're going  to apply to the back of it and then the primer which is how Ford did I'm not going to say this  kind of look just like what Ford did it won't but it'll certainly get you in the neighborhood  so it won't be as bad you won't notice it as much at the shows and I'm also still using my small  brush for this I can see the color through it it's going to not be quite the same red I've  tried to go in and make it as close as I possibly ca

n but it's got a little bit more blue  to it than the original red the original Red's a little dirtier probably more toward a brown and  I could probably go fix that but I'm not gonna and this is just going to be a matter of me going  through and touching up right up to the letters I still use a small brush for this to kind  of keep away from doing too much damage to the work I've already done with the black all right so what I'm going to do  now is I've got this thing face up and I'm just going

to take a piece  of tape and kiss that edge there and I'm going to run this tape around that outside edge yes I have to put  my old man glasses on so I can see what I'm doing I don't mind if the tape sticks up a little  bit I just want it to be enough to so that you don't have any uh exposure on the sides  of the badge a little bit more tape I think I probably will try that I may go ahead  and just try using the paint pen here to do a flood fill the only thing I might would do different on  thi

s one in the future if I had to go and do something like this again is I would possibly  go in and just take all the original paint off completely and not try to save any of it  and go back and do what I'm doing right now fresh with this silver and everything the  problem you have is it's a reverse but there's no way to get foil down inside those the depth  of those letters this type of paint pen a lot of guys will use these to do Chrome on windshield  perimeters and things like that on model ca

rs just going to go through and flood fill all this  you could probably also do the lettering on your abusing my tools Big Blob take your page where you can okay poor Bill he spent my friend Bill Rhodesian spent  like an afternoon putting this top on here and I have just absolutely abused it and I can am  continuing to abuse his work he's got a channel check it out it's six round Studio putting a link  down here below me you need to go check out Bill's stuff he does all kind of restoration work

on his  channel really cool stuff he's a master Craftsman all right so now I'm gonna go get some  spray primer and I'm going to Prime the back of it like Ford did it's not going  to be perfect but it should be good enough don't worry all right I'm going to be using the  auto saw we talked about at the beginning of the show to go in and clean up plastic the  tape I'm using is a little old so I've got some trash from that on here as well I'm  just going to hold this thing down on the table top tha

t I've where I've got it and I'm  going to use the auto saw to polish that face and I will also be working the edges as well just getting all the junk off the sides here I know that it says that this is metal polish but  I'll tell you what I've used it on all kinds of stuff Plastics and metals and it works really good  I ain't got a bit of skin in their game I just like their product line and I use it habitually  on stuff like this because it just works [Music] so there's your badge uh it's not

perfect by  any stretch of the imagination but you have to remember when you're doing this kind of stuff and  it's something that I sometimes lose sight of when you are doing a project like this you are dealing  with a dramatic piece of minutia on your car this is just a very small microcosm of the rest of  the car it doesn't have to necessarily be super perfect I have a feeling that when if you're  looking at this from the perspective of a new car back in the day there could be some problems  w

ithin the badge that you just wouldn't notice because you're taking in the entire automobile and  that could be the case here this thing will end up looking pretty darn good once we put it inside  of the badge holder so to speak on the 75 Torino all right folks well that's it for this week do  me a favor be kind to each other love on each other treat each other very nice you guys have  a great week and we'll see you on down the road [Music] button it up put it on you would use a product like thi

s the autosol  we talk about a good bit on the show for that kind of activity oh sorry Jackson just told  me it's upside down now it's right side up