Restoring oringinal grills?

Darrman · Post by **Darrman** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:59 pm

I am in the process of removing the front clip on my truck. I have the grill off and have been looking it over. It is a aluminum '69 grill, and in relativly good shape, if you dont count the headlight surrounds.
Anyways, I dont see any rips or breaks, and no creases. But there are some bends, nothing severe, and that a rubber mallet and block wont fix.
However the finish is pretty poor, covered in years of crud and some scratches here and there. So what can I do to safely strip the crap off of the aluminum and then buff it out?

Post by **FORDification** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 8:16 pm

http://www.fordification.com/trim-polishing.htm

cathynkeith · Post by **cathynkeith** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 8:28 pm

not to step on keith, but mine was sanded with 6 grits then polishing cream by gomez paint and body here in longview.

fordman · Post by **fordman** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 9:43 pm

c and k what was the grits again. i had been using some on some test pieces and it does work. but i wanted to get you to say whay had been used because i forgot.

Randle · Post by **Randle** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 11:40 pm

I buffed my with a 3M pad to remove the anodized coating, then sanded starting with 220 grit on the rougher parts and stepping up to 1000 grit before polishing. It would probably have been easier to used lye to remove the anodizing, but when I done mine it was cold and I didn't want to deal with the fumes in my garage.

Big D's 69 · Post by **Big D's 69** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 7:47 am

Yeah stripping the anodized coating off of it is the key to being able to sand and polish. Once you get it stripped, sanded, and polished then make sure you use a sealer to seal the shine. Good luck on the progress.

cathynkeith · Post by **cathynkeith** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:05 am

fordman wrote:c and k what was the grits again. i had been using some on some test pieces and it does work. but i wanted to get you to say whay had been used because i forgot.

he started with 180 gritt sand paper then 400 then 600 then 1500 and polish guess it was just 4, i had to look up the post.

Darrman · Post by **Darrman** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:14 am

Thanks! I work for a chemical distributing company and I have some stuff for cleaning aluminum coils, but if used to strong it will pit and eat aluminum. I may try to use some on one of the headlight surrounds, since they will have to be replaced anyways.

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Restoring oringinal grills?

Restoring oringinal grills?

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