Thread: Repainting aluminium Landrover badge - best way?

Originally Posted by pfillery

Paint the whole lot and buff off where the letters are

seems to be what the pommy restorers seem to do...

Any of these options would be good.

Or buy a new one for $15

I did about half a dozen for a wall collection in my shed some time ago. They started out in all kinds of configurations - 1 had at least 7 different coats of paint of various colours, another you couldn't read the 'Port Elizabeth' or 'South Africa' lettering at all due to the thickness of the various coatings.

I simply stipped them back to bare aluminium with paint stripper, buffed them up and etched the background only leaving the letters, raised edge etc uncovered. Then painted them with black satin sheen with a modelling brush. Any over-run on the lettering and raised edge I carefully removed with a Stanley knife.

They all came up well allowing for their age and original condition.

The buffering option from an earlier reply sounds easier - I had thought of spraying mine and wiping across the raised edges with a clean solvented rag. Anyway, there are various options.

Not sure where you get a new one for $15 as has been suggested - the old second hand ones seem to go for more than that on eBay. If someone is selling new ones for that price I would be keen to get one for my truck.

Cheers

I stripped them, then etch primed them, sprayed them, and removed the paint from the top of the letters using fine wet and dry. Note that the originals had the minor lettering painted, according to my memory, but you can remove the paint from them as well if you want.

An alternative, that I have not tried on these, but have on other objects, would be to carefully coat the top of the raised letters with a thin coat of grease before etching and painting - the paint can then be rubbed off easily when dry.

John

John's idea of using grease is a good one and probably what I would do, however there is also masking fluid sold in art and hobby shops which is liquid latex, paint it on to the areas you want to mask then peel off with tweezers when the paint dries.
Some paints react adversely with some greases.

I have tried the wet and dry option but if you have a low spot you have to remove too much of the badge to clean all the paint off

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The grease idea works well I tried it three weeks ago

Paint black and buff where the letters are.

That's what we do

Mrs hh