I repainted a toy pedal tractor that we bought off of Facebook Marketplace to give to my son for Christmas. Actually, I repainted a toy pedal tractor TWICE because the cherry red spray paint that I used the first time never dried, so I had to scrub it off with mineral spirits and sand the body of the tractor back down to bare metal before using apple red spray paint the second time around.
To add insult to injury: just as I was finishing up, I tried to spray a little black paint onto the bolt I was about to use to attach the seat, and the top of the spray paint can exploded, sending dots of black paint all over the freshly painted rear wheel. I did the only thing I could do: had an aneurysm and then photoshopped the before-and-after pictures to remove the black speckles (jk LOL!).
Looking at these photos, I see that I also fixed the orientation of the front wheel.
The tractor itself is a AGCO Allis 9815 that was made by Scale Model Toys in Dyersville, Iowa some time in mid-90s, according to my Googling.
Here are some behind-the-scenes shots:
-
- The original paint was peeling off like paper
-
- The pedals were only attached with one screw instead of four, so this pedal was scraping the side of the tractor each time it went around.
-
- I debated going with bare metal and a clear coat, but I didn’t.
-
- I used self-etching primer on all of the metal parts.
-
- This was the first coat of cherry red that later went down the shop sink drain.
-
- Back down to bare metal again.
-
- I stripped the paint off of the wheels (front wheels not pictured) and went with glossy white instead of the original rusty gray.
