Grill straightening

[bluef250]

Does anyone know of a company that can straighten an aluminum grill?

[xxxtina63]

No, but if there is, you can count on it being spendy. You can straighten grills using autobody hammers, dollies, and a lot of "custom shaped" home made dollies. Most important is a gentle touch and a lot of patience. My grill had pretty rough damage and took a great deal of time to straighten. Still, it's not perfect, but considering the headlight bezels were bent and crushed, it is a vast improvement. Hardest thing though is dealing with stretching of the metal due to damage. The grill is really just chrome plated tin, not aluminum as it looks. A small flaw can be unnoticable, but bigger ones that require a lot of work will often times damage the plating, resulting in a tarnished or "been sanded" appearance. This is due to the plating being stressed and basically cracking.

[fordman]

atcually i have two grill that are made of diufferent materials. one is aluminum and the other is chrome plated tin as you said. it is a ranger grill i thinkit is a replacement grill that was put on my 68 when the original grill was mashed.

[Whoaaanelly]

I sent my Falcon grill, which is the same aluminum anodized brightwork a lot of our trucks have, to Anobrite "King of Trim" in LA, CA. It cost me $750, but it was like new when I got it back. It's a show car though, so it's worth the money. For a daily driver, I'd shop Eastwood and get their trim hammer and dolly, which works great. You can then get an anodizing remover (I've got some at home, but can't recall the name...) and then you can polish the grille and clear-coat it. You can't polish the anodized aluminum. Anodizing is a hard surface that has to be removed to polish.

[Banjo]

If you can find a large bookstore and look into a Hemmings, you can probably find some shops that specialize in straightening trim parts

[bluef250]

Just looked on the Hemmings web site and their are 3 or 4 businesses that might do the job.