Restoring contour to flattened hood crest

[AlfaGTA]

I have a nice orange bar crest with all the metal and enamel intact. Problem is that it is flattened to very slight concave. Is there a proven or recommended technique for getting it closer to its intended shape? Thanks. Bill

[Jim Morris]

Is it truly the case that it is so flat that when you mount the rubber gasket under it and press the assembly on to the hood, the top and bottom are conspicuously high? If so, I can't conceive of a way to bend it that would not cause the enamel panels to pop off. All of these badges have a "very slight concave" of the back side in their original shape, unless I am missing something.

[AlfaGTA]

Front is slightly concave, i.e., bent the wrong way. Thanks. Bill

[ejboyd5]

Return to vendor.

[Bobs 67S]

Early badges were flatter than the 1980's >on.

[LiveFromNY]

I know it feels wrong, but I've had a couple badges with pretty significant bends that I've carefully bent back without damaging the enamel. I figured, eff it, if it got bent without damaging the enamel in the first place, maybe the same will hold true in reverse.

YMMV.

[911T]

Having done quite a lot of enamel work I can tell you I resist the temptation to bend the badges back into shape. The enamel in our badges is very thin. I have 4 orange bar badges - all of which have a slightly different bend to them. It is true that they survive a bit of a bend without the enamel coming out... However, my feeling on this is that you will not notice a slight bend but you sure will notice missing enamel ... The risk / reward ratio is not in my favor on this one.

Somewhat off point I mentioned being an enamelist and to that point restoring the badges is something of interest to me. I have a badge that is ready to have the new enamel applied to it, the badge is stripped of all enamel and the mounting posts on the back have been removed. The posts on the back are applied with lead solder which is a low temp process that is done after the enamel has been applied, but before the enamel is hand stoned and then final polished (these badges are very hand made) The application of the kiln fired black enamel in the badges is slam-dunk easy ... My intern can do it, as is the application of the orange enamel, the only issue is that whomever blended the orange color for Porsche used a blend of orange and another color. The second color shows in the badges as micro sized flecks of grey (I know, too much detail) anyhow, to this date I have never found a perfect match for the orange (of which there are two or more shades - one slightly redder than the other)

Moving forward ... If one day I find a match for the orange enamel I’ll restore a badge and post up the process ...

[911T]

Early badges were flatter than the 1980's >on.

Hi ... I was just looking at the pictures you posted of your badge. I recently received a badge that had the same cloudy white patches on the red enamel, a sun bleached look. Anyhow, the surface of the enamel is quite porous and it soaks up the polish products from years of polishing ... None of the equipment I had removed it (I looked at it under 40x magnification) I used high pressure steam, ultra Sonics, the thing that eventually removed it was using a diamond cutting paste on a high speed felt wheel (.5inch diameter) basically the same equipment we use to do final polish on gem stones.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that it if it bothered you it can be fixed (without removing the gold electro plating on the metal parts)

[68911+1]

I posed this question several years ago and although I seemed to get a bit "spanked" there was some good information:

http://www.early911sregistry.org/for...ighlight=badge

[AlfaGTA]

Thanks much. Bill