Hi All, Newbie here and was looking for surface prep advice.

[jmc]

Hi,

I'm new to this site and very excited to try my hand at restoring and customizing my jumbo Mazinger.  My 8 year has fallen in love with my old stuff. So, having said that I was able to disassemble my JM and I want to prep the surface for painting. I understand that its polyethylene plastic which is difficult to paint. Has anyone had reasonable success with this? Someone on this site was kind enough to refer me to some previous threads (which was helpful) but I was curious if there were more recent success stories. I was told by a collegaue that an adhesive promoter after a sanding would be a good start. Is there a treatment for the plastic or a known primer that self-etches into the plastic. I have a bunch of shampoo bottle to practice on first but I still need a starting point.  Any help would be appreciated.

[xtrlowz75]

Why are you going to paint it? Is it that scratched up? I would try the lightest automotive buffing compound first, and just use the buffing compound like waxing a car. One that is done you can either use wax, or good old Armor-all to restore the plastic. It should look close to nice without actually messing up the toy from painting. I've restored several jumbos this way and they always come out looking great, even if a few of the scratches can still be seen up close.

And besides paint will chip off after some play causing some more messy fun, and making your hard work look like crap quickly.

[jmc]

Apr 26, 2014 16:45:23 GMT -5 xtrlowz75 said:

Why are you going to paint it? Is it that scratched up? I would try the lightest automotive buffing compound first, and just use the buffing compound like waxing a car. One that is done you can either use wax, or good old Armor-all to restore the plastic. It should look close to nice without actually messing up the toy from painting. I've restored several jumbos this way and they always come out looking great, even if a few of the scratches can still be seen up close.

And besides paint will chip off after some play causing some more messy fun, and making your hard work look like crap quickly.

I will definitely try that on my complete one. This was for a pretty beat up one. I actually wanted to give it that same color scheme as the soul of chogokin great mazinger (black and silver). I'm hoping to convince him to use it as a model more than a toy.