I have 1951 F-1 that has badly pitted trim on the dashboard

Trim is on the glove box door, ash tray, and on the dash above the radio speaker grill.

Seems as though it would be hard to find new replacement pieces so, repair would be in order.

How would you go about repairing pitted pot metal?

Take it to a chrome shop and pay to have it repaired and re-plated?

Or, sand it down until the pits are gone and have the pieces re-chromed?

Also the ash tray is heavily rusted.

Will sand blast to remove the rust, but if it is too bad I would need to buy a replacement.

Does anyone sell replacements?

Advice is appreciated

Thanks

Dan

 

pitted pot metal is difficult and very labor intensive (read $$$$) to repair. Unless it is a piece for an extremely rare vehicle it would be a lot cheaper to buy a mint or NOS replacement off ebay.
If your ash tray is to be painted, it likely can be saved. Sandblast to remove all rust and examine. If there is no rust thru give it a thin coat of 2 part surfacer putty (not body putty, I like Eversoft's products, can usually be found at body shop supply/paint stores) and sand smooth with 80 grit to knock off any lumps or ridges followed by 200 all on a rubber block to smooth, prime with a 2 part primer surfacer, SCUFF with 400 used wet (be careful when wet sanding the paper cuts FAST, if you sand thru the primer, wash and dry, respray with primer and try again) or green nylon pad and paint.

 

If you're painting the trim you can use filler, if you're not it's a lot of work to fix pits. You may check the price to just re-chrome it, it might be more than finding a "new" piece.

 

The only trims that are made of pot metal should be the glove box door and the ashtray trim. The trim over the speaker grille should be stainless steel. You shouldn't have any pits in the stainless. Stainless can be polished.

As for the pits, the re-chrome process is cheap after you spend money on having the pits welded and smoothed out. Each pit spot needs to be welded and sanded smooth. It can't be filled with plastic filler due to the chroming process. I spoke to a guy at a recent swap meet that does trim work. He said that fixing pot metal is very labor intensive. The more pitted the part is, the more time it takes to fix it.

If your trims are badly pitted, I'd suggest finding a replacement that has less pitting, or find NOS as suggested. However, finding NOS can be a long awaited process.

Ashtrays come up on eBay quite a lot, so finding a better replacement for yours shouldn't be a problem, should you need one.

 

..not to mention when you try to weld pot metal that it just burns through it.

 

Would it be possible to use solder to fill in the pits?

 

No, lead solder doesn't stick to pot metal (zinc alloy) nor does it fill small holes it has a lot of surface tension so it would just bridge the holes. The right way is to clean out every pit of oxidation with a dental bit, then electroform a heavy layer of copper over the entire piece. Then the copper is all sanded off except in the pits, much like using body filler. If the pits are all filled it it then replated. if some are still not filled, the electoforming and sanding is repeated until the surface is completely filled and smooth then it's given a final plating. The quality of the job depends on the craftman having a good hand and eye and a lot of patience when sanding off the copper, it is real easy to oversand and leave the piece with ripples and rounded edges where they were originally sharp, ruining the piece. Chrome, like black paint shows every ripple and bump. The restorer could have 20 - 100's of hours labor into the work. In most cases no matter how outrageous the price might seem on a mint piece, it's still going to be cheaper than restoring the piece. Unless of course you are doing a 100 pt restoration of the only surviving 1918 Wingbat deluxe That originally belonged to Baron Von Schlitzliker (and you have the original title to prove it) to show at the Concours d'elegance.

 

I have used Muggyweld to repair pot metal with some degree of success. You can look in my gallery at some of the pictures under the Chrome Work section. Pits need to be cleaned out well...all corrosion must be removed, I use a drill bit (without the drill motor) to manually clean out each pit. Muggyweld comes with a liquid flux that changes color when the correct temperature has be achieved. This is very important since zinc (potmetal) melts at a fairly low temp.

 

Nice work on the repairs did you polish out the metal after Muggying or did the chrome shop? What did the chrome shop think of using Muggy weld?

 

Charlie,

Excellent work! Can you give us a few more details?

Bobby

here is the link to Muggyweld;
http://www.muggyweld.com/potmetal.html

 

Nice work and pictures Charlie and Bobby thanks for the link. I just finished using the 56% silver solder on SS and it came out looking great and was easy to use.

 

I have used the Muggyweld products on potmetal and aluminum and with a little work gotten good results with both. The local plating shop (the only one left in San Diego, thank you CA EPA/OSHA) was the one who suggested Muggyweld, they like the way it polishes and the way the plating comes out. Since the potmetal is so soft and the Muggyweld is a bit harder, care must be taken when sanding/polishing the repaired area however. Not really a big deal but if you don't watch yourself you can end up removing too much potmetal around the Muggyweld. There are videos on the net that show how to use the Muggyweld products, when/if you try their products be advised that your first attempts will not go as smoothly as the video demos...but that could be said with just about anything one would try for the first time. If you can control the heat around the repair area then this process really works well. Once I found out how to keep the piece from wicking away the heat from the area under repair my results improved dramatically. I do most of my own polishing to save $$$ on the plating costs...and the plater likes it too because he has a hard time finding good prep guys and when I bring parts in to the shop that are ready for plate he knows that I am going to be happy with the results.

 

Thanks Charlie!

great info

Bobby

 

thanks Chuck; nice work !

 

Thanks for all the help.

It's clear to me that Charlie is a true artist when it comes to pot metal repair.

I don't think that I would be able to fix the pieces, that I need to fix, like Charlie has done, but I am willing to give it a try.

My first thought was that I only have one choice - attempt to repair the pitted pot metal.

But now, I think looking for replacement pieces while attempting to repair what I have is the way to go.

Since I couldn't find replacement pieces in any of the top name catalogs, I thought they were completely unavailable.

It didn't dawn on me that there may be some available used, in better condition than mine.

The two pieces, glove box door trim and a small piece on the ash tray have mounting screws that are badly rusted - so I may have to cut them out to separate them from the sheet metal.

The outcome of that project may determine my course of action.

I try to look at things like this as a learning experience - so I thank you all for your advice

Dan