How to straighten stainless steel??

[hewi]

G'day.

Is there anyway you can do this yourself?

Have a 69 charger and the centre "I" piece on the grille is a bit shappy. Some of the trim is not the best either.

Any help would me much appreciated.

Cheers,
Hewi

[John_Kunkel]

I've done some myself if it wasn't too mangled.

Eastwood sells a trim hammer and small anvil, you use the hammer to ding out the dents from the inside which leaves some slight raised bumps on the outside. I use a vibrator sander to remove the raised bumps and then polish out the sander marks with a motor-mounted cloth buffing wheel and polishing compound intended for stainless.

Wear heavy gloves when polishing, stainless edges cause painful cuts if the piece gets away from you.

[hewi]

Hi John. Thanks for the reply.
What grit sandpaper did you use?
Cheers

[John_Kunkel]

I use 280 grit on the jitterbug sander.

[bill440rt]

Problem is, the center I piece is NOT stainless steel, it's ALUMINUM!!!!
Aluminum can be very tricky to straighten, sometimes it's almost impossible unless left to a professional. Then, you'd either have to strip off the anodizing & either polish it on a buffing wheel or have it re-anodized. If you polish it, you'd have to do all the rest of the trim to match.
My advice is spend the $200 bucks on a repro if you can swing it. Oh, & pretty soon the WHOLE SET will be available.

[jaak]

I straighten mine, I made some 'tapping' tools from old screw drivers and files, I grinded the ends to a blount edge on a bench grinder, then I took the trim and colored the dent with a black magic marker, flipped them over and used my home made tools to tap out the dents and dings. After tapping I flipped them back over and run over the area I marked with a fine tooth bastard file (one way) any black spots left (from marker) needs more tapping, sort of like a guide coat on body work. After I was finished straightening I stripped the old anodizing off with a 3M roloc disc, then proceded to hand sand with finer and finer sandpaper. After sanding I used some small buffing wheels (I bought off of the MAC truck) on an air drill, i found the RPM of an air drill to be about right, air die grinder is too fast, then polished to a nice shine using some compounds I bought from eastwood. BTW I made holding fixtures from scrap wood to attach my trim to then clamped the fixtures in a vise, so my trim would not go flying across the shop. I did mine a while back ago before repops were available, but even so the 'I' trim is 200, the staight parts are around 150, I think I have around 25-35 in mine with the price of compound, paper, etc. Heres a pic of my grill, though I need to take better close ups of the trim, but I was very pleased the way it turned out.
Good Luck,
Jason

PS- the trim on the pass side of grille hasn't been installed yet when photo was taken, just "I" trim and drivers side "C" and straight trim.

[dodge freak]

Nice job, you make a good body shop man.

[squeakfinder]

Well, I pretty much did the hammer and dolly work on my straight trim the way every one else did on my 68. I used course sand paper to smooth out the ruff spots then used progressively finer paper. The finest paper I used was 600 which I wet sanded with. I then used rubbing compound to finish it off. I used a similar technique on a set of aluminum mag wheels (except no hammer and dolly work). When I was done with the wheels I washed and dried them stuck them in front of a heater, then rattle canned them with clear spray paint to keep them from oxidizing and turning gray.

[jaak]

Hey Hewi,
Here are the pics of the emblems.

Jason