Lego Taunus 17M Deluxe repairs

 
This Taunus 17M Deluxe was found going cheap on a small ads site, and turned out to have a dent in the roof on arrival. Leading to one repair that sadly didn't turn out as I'd hoped...

Like most early Lego passenger cars, it has slots at the inside bottom of the sides that clamp around the chassis, so inserting a thumbnail in a wheel well will start pulling a side loose. 

This car turned out to have rusty axles, which were cleaned with steel wool, as well as a broken axle mount which got repaired with a replacement as described in earlier posts.

With my previous repair of a dented Taunus in mind, I thought this dent too would be easy enough to fix. The roof was immersed in near-boiling water a number of times to soften the plastic, after which a small teaspoon (both bowl and stem) was used to press out the dent bit by bit.

The crease at the bottom of the dent was still there, so I tried filling that up with little bits of red cellulose acetate plastic (the car itself also being made from that). These were dissolved/softened with acetone and then stuck down in the crease.

Quite a bit of sanding was required to get the roof flush and even. But then the plastic of the dent decided to warp back, this time leaving a crack where the crease had been.

As a last-ditch measure, I decided to patch the dent with a piece from a window frame. This was severely sanded down to reach the thickness of the dent.

The patch was stuck into the dent with acetone. Once dry, another lengthy bout of sanding got the roof flush and smooth once again, albeit thinner than it was originally. I actually gave it a coat of red paint inside because it started to become somewhat translucent.

The end result has a blotchy look to it, with a few tiny pits and a new small crack that appeared while polishing. Despite a good try, it seems I can't win them all...