Here's a quick description of what I did to restore the front panel of my DE606. The chrome was in pretty decent condition, the white perfect, and the gold on the bottom needed a respraying. First of all the white was masked off so I could polish up the chrome without fear of damaging the white. I used rubbing compound for this and with quite a bit of rubbing most of the pitting came off nicley.The chrome on this plastic is actually quite good. I applied a self-imposed time limit of 2 hours to this aspect of the dryer project. My goal here was only to have a respectable looking and perfectly working daily driver here, this is not a showcar!
Next the masking was removed from the white area and the chrome was all carefully masked as well as the white in order to spray only the gold. I would only use a clean release painters tape for the masking and even then don't let it stay on for too long and not in the sun. The paint from the factory likes to come off easily so be careful.
Next the gold area was sanded with a fine sanding sponge, you could use a scothcbite pad also, but the sponges work really nice to get in all the contours and corners. Scuff it all up real good and vacuum.
I used a paint and primer all in one (see pic) if not I would prime with a plastic paint if you sanded down to bare plastic. This gold is a pretty close match for the original. Sprayed a couple light coats then removed masking after about an hour. I like to remove masking fairly quickly as it seems less likely to pull paint off.
I'm very happy with the panel and the rest of the dryer was completely disassembled, cleaned,lubed and put back together with success. A new front drum seal was installed with high temp rtv from the hardware store. I wish I had not bought the expensive seal and just bought some felt weather stripping from the hardware store instead, I could have saved $10.It seems to be exactly the same stuff.
Upon firing it up and doing the first load I am happy. My concern was that the drum would be too small but it held a pretty good sized load from our modern dryer which is soon to be replaced by an A308 from 1980 in matching harvest gold.
Hope this helps someone,
Rob
Next the masking was removed from the white area and the chrome was all carefully masked as well as the white in order to spray only the gold. I would only use a clean release painters tape for the masking and even then don't let it stay on for too long and not in the sun. The paint from the factory likes to come off easily so be careful.
Next the gold area was sanded with a fine sanding sponge, you could use a scothcbite pad also, but the sponges work really nice to get in all the contours and corners. Scuff it all up real good and vacuum.
I used a paint and primer all in one (see pic) if not I would prime with a plastic paint if you sanded down to bare plastic. This gold is a pretty close match for the original. Sprayed a couple light coats then removed masking after about an hour. I like to remove masking fairly quickly as it seems less likely to pull paint off.
I'm very happy with the panel and the rest of the dryer was completely disassembled, cleaned,lubed and put back together with success. A new front drum seal was installed with high temp rtv from the hardware store. I wish I had not bought the expensive seal and just bought some felt weather stripping from the hardware store instead, I could have saved $10.It seems to be exactly the same stuff.
Upon firing it up and doing the first load I am happy. My concern was that the drum would be too small but it held a pretty good sized load from our modern dryer which is soon to be replaced by an A308 from 1980 in matching harvest gold.
Hope this helps someone,
Rob
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