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        This model was my first big purchase on e-bay. It was also my first real restoration. I found this Turbo Scorpion during my morning searches on the bay. The seller had a BIN (buy it now) price set lower than what I thought it would go for had the auction gone full term so I snapped it up before someone else could.
        When it showed up on my doorstep I was like a kid on Christmas! After getting through all the packing, there it was. The condition good over all and there were none of the dreaded surprises I'd read so much about. List of bad parts is as follows. Shock collars broken as with every early Kyosho, wire antenna on rear cage missing, bad paint, pinion gear cover almost cut in half.
These are images of how it looked the day it showed up.
        Performing a restoration on a car with metal parts is always rewarding. After each metal piece was removed I scrubbed it with an SOS pad. (yes every metal piece) The plastic bits were cleaned with a basic dish soap and a toothbrush. The wheels had a silver finish that came off with just soap. I don't think this was a factory finish as all the catalog pics show white wheels. I spread this out over a few nights sitting in front of the TV on a towel.
        The body, now that's where these get tough. I'd heard that brake fluid worked well to remove old paint from a lexan body. I'd also read that oven cleaner worked but ate up the lexan so I went with the DOT3 brake fluid. I was nervous about this because I know how hard it is to find a Turbo Scorpion body that's in this nice of shape. I got a glass casserole dish and started the process. I poured the fluid onto the under side of the body and watched to see what happened. I didn't see it do anything for about 10 min. Then I started to see the paint ripple. I was elated that this stuff was actually going to work. As I began to pull the paint off I thought maybe I should rinse it off and give the lexan a break, glad I did. You see the fluid makes the lexan foggy and white if left on for more than a few min. I applied, brushed and rinsed for about a day and a half to get all the stubborn bits of paint off. Then I used a Dremmel tool with a cotton wheel on a low speed to polish out all the spots of fog where that fluid had set too long. There is still a tinge of red left on the body in places, I'm hoping it won't be visible after I paint it.
        Painting a vintage body is never easy and painting a body that you spent 3 days stripping it's even worse. As you can see this one turned out quite nice. This body was trashed before I stripped it. You can still see some red paint that had stained tiny stress cracks and a bit of blue that went astray but for my first airbrush job I think I did very well.
        Just have to wait for the decals.
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