Polishing grille trim

[69bronzeT5]

Hey guys,

I'm still working on my grille. I was lucky to come across 1 can of Krylon Semi Flat black so I'm spraying the black pretty soon. I'm wondering whats the best thing to use to polish the grille trim?

[terrible one]

How about a Dremel with the soft wheel thing and some compound?

[bill440rt]

You only going to be able to polish them just so much. Don't forget, they're anodized. You'll be able to clean them real good, use a nice metal polish, & that's about it. The only other solution to brighten them more is to strip off the anodizing leaving them bare aluminum & then polish them. Or, have them re-anodized. Or, buy a new set of repros.

[69chargeryeehaa]

You only going to be able to polish them just so much. Don't forget, they're anodized. You'll be able to clean them real good, use a nice metal polish, & that's about it. The only other solution to brighten them more is to strip off the anodizing leaving them bare aluminum & then polish them. Or, have them re-anodized. Or, buy a new set of repros.

i agree,

I just did my trim, and let me tell you it turned into a 4hr project to just polish the 2 end pieces.  At some point my car was stripped, sand blasted.  They also blasted the corner pieces, which left it matte.  I wetsanded the trim with 600 paper, and polished it using my drill press at 3000rpm, and a cloth wheel and polishing compound.  It was ALOT of work, but i got it to shine like a mirror.  I chickened out and didn't do all the trim, just the worst ones, and it looks great.   I might just cave and buy new trim, there is a few dents and dings in the other pieces which i also fixed, but there is some damage i can't fix.  After i polished it i applied some wax to them to protect them, so far so good....

[Charger-Bodie]

I sanded all the anodize off of mine and buff them. This works good BUT you must wax them often so the dont tarnish , cause that is why they anodized them.

They also end up quite abit shinier than they originally were so its not for a concourse car .

[six-tee-nine]

If you have dents in them wich you'll have to hammer out and sand straight you will have to sand every peace.

It's very time conuming and you won't make it with a dremel. You'll want to have a good polisher an compound for the job.
My center trim piece was totaled and so far I have up to 6 hrs (on and off) in it and it's still not where I want it to be.....

This is what I started with :



Now :

[BlueSS454]

Someone had decided it was a good idea to hit the grille moldings on my car with 80 grit    I sanded them down by hand until the marks were gone and the anodizing coating off, then polised them with some Wenol and a dremel.  They came out quite nice.  The last grit paper I used was 1000 ultra fine.

[DPL]

Hey Sixteenine

How did you turn that center piece from the bashed in POS it was to what you have now?

What tools do you recommend for fixing dented and creased trim pieces?

Amazing what you've done so far...

DPL

[Silver R/T]

ive just bought new set for my grille

[Ryan]

I did the same. For $450 I'll take perfect trim over hours of polishing and hammering

[Charger-Bodie]

I did the same. For $450 I'll take perfect trim over hours of polishing and hammering

It all depends on what you have , My grille trim had 2 tiny dings and the typical sand pitting. It was worth it to me.

If you have bent up stuff , getting the new stuff is the way to go.

[darrin75]

Check out mopartraffic.com. I have the grille parts.  Email me about special pricing.

[six-tee-nine]

Well, you can buy everything new if you want to.....
But for several reasons I do not buy everything new....

1) I live in Europe and I'm not trying to go low budget at all but I pay twice as much for my parts as you guys do in the US
2) Restoring vintage cars is a hobby for me and that means restoring it and not buying everything new simply because it gets unnafordable if you have to get everything new.



@ DPL :

Well I hammered the most out with a body hammer with a long flat edge. to shape the front edges of the trim piece I used a square edged piece of metal. For the corners and the hard to reach places I used an old screwdriver not a sharp one but a stomp one.
O and the hammering goes very gently.
Wen you think you're getting somewhere then you start grinding with a piece of wood, not with your fingers, the you'll find the low spots so you can hammer them out and so on and on....