So here is a real treasure, a 1955 Tonka van! There are three kinds of metro vans, Tonka Rescue Squad, Tonka Carnation Milk, and Tonka Parcel Delivery. These have been really rare to find on the market, and they might be one of the most expensive collectable Tonka toys around. I saw one restored Tonka utility van worth more than $600 on eBay. Today I am happy to show you the restoration of this Rusty 1955 Tonka Rescue Squad Van Truck.
Before I started, I felt that this restoration should be pretty smooth, not too difficult. The van body itself is one whole piece and there aren't too many large parts. However, it wasn't quite that easy! During the restoration process, I still encountered many difficulties and problems. The first challenge was sandblasting to remove the paint and rust. The chassis and the body are welded together and cannot be disassembled. The sandblasting gun could do nothing to shoot the abrasive media into the corners of the inside of the body. It took a lot of time to remove the rust from those inside corners! I have used liquid rust remover before with good results, so I decided to soak the entire body in the rust remover. Fortunately, after 10 hours of soaking, the rust was removed, and the body looked pretty good!!
The second big challenge was the paint/powder coating. Because the body is one piece, again the corners inside the body are not easy to get paint to evenly. After the actual baking, I noticed that some of the dead corners in the body were not evenly powder coated, and although it didn't impact the overall appearance, it was a shortcoming and left me with some regrets as to the project as a whole.
Another small regret is that I didn't do a trial installation of the two doors at the rear of the van before painting and final assembly. After installation, the left door is a little tight, and the right door is a little too loose. The two doors are not as tightly seamed as I would like. This isn't easy to correct at this point without completely redoing the doors. The learned experience is that you must try the installation before completing the paint, and if it's not suitable, correct the issue before painting! I've been really lucky and haven't run into this issue before.
There was also a little accident during the powder coating process. After I finished the painting, when I washed my hands and wiped my hands with a towel, I accidentally splashed water droplets on the van body. This of course forced me to completely clean off the paint powder and totally redo the powder coating again.
The last big challenge happened during the final assemble process, when pasting the decal stickers on the van body. There were 11 decal stickers on the front and rear. This may be the most decals for any Tonka toy, or maybe for any brand of traditional metal toy. It was really tough to position the big stickers on the body. If you're not very careful, the decals will stick together, or they may be unevenly attached, or the decals on the glue side may get dirty. Fortunately, all the decal stickers were pasted correctly and I think it looks awesome!! One really neat thing about the decals. Did you notice the strange triangular CD sticker on the side of the van? I'm pretty sure this is the old civil defense logo from back in those early cold war days. You may see this sticker or sign on old nuclear bomb shelters. Pretty cool!!
I chose pearl white for the color of the coating powder. It looks really beautiful and also makes the restored van/ambulance look truly perfect!
Please let me know what you think of this restoration. Isn't it amazing!!
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