Reply To: Patina vs. restoration

[fisherman6]

I appreciate both a nice cosmetic restoration and original patina. I do typically lean toward leaving the original finish, but giving it a good cleaning and a polish if the finish will take it. If they are really bad, then I am not against restoring the finish. If they are bad and a common motor I have even gotten a little creative with the new finish for example, the motor in my Avatar. it is a 1959 Evinrude Sportwin Golden Jubilee that was really rough when I bought it. It needed extensive mechanical work as well as some help in the looks department. It got mechanically rebuilt using a mish-mash of compatible Johnson and Evinrude parts from 1957-1959 to get it back on the water. I still have a fuel leak I haven’t successfully tracked down yet, but it is a runner again. I decided that it needed a paint job that reflected what it was made of. Once I get the fuel leak fixed and get it on the lake I will make a video of it running on the boat and give a bit more detail to the story of the motor. That one is something out of the ordinary for me. I usually leave them be and really like a nice original survivor. I do have a few that I plan to try my hand at cosmetic restoration on as well.

As others have said, it depends a lot on the motor and the condition. If they are nice I leave them alone. If they are rare, I leave them alone. I don’t have any real rare, highly valuable motors, but unless it was really rough, I’d let it be other than a little cleaning up on the outside. The mechanics of getting them back to good running condition then running them is my main interest.

-Ben

OldJohnnyRude on YouTube