Restoring old paint

I am thinking about buying this tail and restoring it.
What is it going to take to make the dull shinny again ?
Is it even possible?

I would start by trying Meguiars Swirl Remover. It's good stuff. Ed

Anything that is scratched through the paint isn't going to be fixable without adding paint. For restoring I use Meguires. 4 step process and it brings things back a long ways. Paint cleaner, deep crystal polish, show car glaze 7, then yellow #26 wax. If it is time to break out the paint I take it to professionals. I'm just a wuss when it comes to painting.
Option #2 is to shoot it with clear. #1, degrease because you don't want to drive any contamination deeper into the paint by sanding. Then very lightly sand with a 600 or 800 just to break and even the surface. Sanding will make it look cloudy, (scary as heck) and you may even want to mask off the decals with fine line tap prior to sanding. Again with the wax degreaser and then shoot it with clear. Buff the clear and it should look as good as possible short of a bare plastic total repaint. I've seen several people (hobbyists) get exceptional results with 'spray max 2K paint'.

Sorry for underlining the entire paragraph, I don't seem to be smart enough to undo it. Lightly sand, was the only part I intended to emphasize

I believe that the tail was made in the U.S. so that would mean that it was painted here too Right?
What type of paint that they where using ?
Did they do a clear coat ?

I think Meguiars is a good place to start, thanks guys

Yes you can! very fine wet sand with 800 -1000 wet/dry. Then spray clear over it!
Good car clear. Urethane, bad stuff! Don't ask California! It causes cancer! Everything ever causes cancer in California

Try restoring it before sanding and clear coating it; sometimes that works surprisingly well. If that doesn't work you can then do the sanding/clear coating. Ed

z1kzonly wrote: Yes you can! very fine wet sand with 800 -1000 wet/dry. Then spray clear over it!
Good car clear. Urethane, bad stuff! Don't ask California! It causes cancer! Everything ever causes cancer in California.
I would like to inject cancer in Nancy Pelozi's Democratic asshole . Use a splintered 2x4 to bang her!

Oh my!!!
(But yeah her and the cadaver!)

z1kzonly wrote: Yes you can! very fine wet sand with 800 -1000 wet/dry. Then spray clear over it!
Good car clear. Urethane, bad stuff! Don't ask California! It causes cancer! Everything ever causes cancer in California.
I would like to inject cancer in Nancy Pelozi's Democratic asshole . Use a splintered 2x4 to bang her!

I hear you loud and clear on that.

650ed wrote: I would start by trying Meguiars Swirl Remover. It's good stuff. Ed

That's what I used as a test on a side cover. Mirror glaze 9 professional swirl remover 2.0 from the auto parts store & applied with a foam buffer attachment & buffing pad using a cordless drill. It's hard to tell in the pic below, but the side cover on the right looks a lot better than the other one.

Like Ed said, you need to try restoring it with polish first. The factory paint is so thin you will cut through using 800. If you were to sand at all, use 2000 wet, clear coat, 1500-2000 to knock down the clear and buff.

Hard to tell what color it is, but I was able to save the original stripes on my bodywork by masking them off and repainting only where needed. Finished it off with the Spray Max.





The white and gold are original, I repainted all the blue and black stripes.

Nice tank! Ed