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 Betterifying Stainless Steel Trim on a 56 Dodge (example)Jump to page : 1 Now viewing page 1 [50 messages per page] | View previous thread :: View next thread |
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56D500boy |
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Expert 5K+ Posts: 9902     Location: Lower Mainland BC | . After being off for months for door painting (and wet sanding and polishing) and me driving the car with no driver's door trim or window (on dry sunny days), I finally got around to reinstalling the trim. There were some issues with the clips I was using (I will do a separate post on that). The trim at the bottom of the driver's door window is a NOS piece that I picked up by mistake during Covid (I thought it was the wider middle piece) but it is very nice so I installed it. That lead to me cleaning and polishing the next piece forward of that, the one that sits on the cowl and matches up with the hood trim. It turned out very nice. Too nice.  Made be open up a new can of worms (more info under the photo) As a result, I decided to remove and "betterify" (improving/making better) the equivalent cowl trim on the passenger side. This was probably unnecessary but, hey, when has that stopped me before? (LOL) That decision resulted in four sub-projects: 1. Repairing the paint that was under the trim 2. Rehabbing the clips that were in the trim 3. Polishing the stainless steel trim itself 4. Reassembling the trim and clips and installing back on the car. There are photos at the end of this post to illustrate each of those three sub-projects 1. Repairing the paint under the trim I knew from working on the driver's side trim that the trim was just held to the car with spring clips and could be removed by prying it off gently. I was gentle on the passenger side trim but I still managed to scratch the paint in a few spots. Most of them would be hidden by the trim when it was re-installed but I couldn't leave it alone. So I cleaned the area (to remove 66 years of dust and mud) and then added a few bits of Spot putty. When the putty was dry and hard, carefully sanded the putty with 220 grit sand paper. Then I did the area above and below with 400 and 800 grit sand paper. After removing the dust with a blue shop towel (they have worked well for me) and masking off the area, I sprayed several coats on the Duplicolor Dodge Neon Intense Blue that I have been using on my car. It is a close match to the original Royal Blue Metallic but has finer metal flakes in it and it glows rather than sparkles. Turned out okay (I will wet sand and polish the paint later, once it has cured a bit). 2. Rehabbing the clips that were in the trim There were three wire spring clips holding the trim to the cowl part of the body. One of the clips broke as I removed the trim. I would buy new clips but Geno Industries (the Canadian distributor for Auveco) doesn't seem to stock them in small quantities (boxes of 100 sure but not 3 or 5). So I was left with rehabbing the existing clips. I had one left from some where so I removed the old crusty foam rubber seal/cushion material from the three clips and placed them in an empty jar and filled the jar with Rust Check brand "Rust Wash" (probably a dilute Phosphoric Acid) to cover the clips and left them over night. The next day, I removed the clips from the Rust Wash and scrubbed them under running warm water with a plastic nail brush. After drying them with paper towels, I used a small brass wire brush to clean them up a bit more. Then they got three or four coats of Tremclad Professional Semi-gloss black rust paint. The Professional grades stuff dries very quickly so multiple coats can be done in a short period of time. I set those aside to dry thoroughly. 3. Polishing the stainless steel trim itself I don't own a polishing wheel (I have watched lots of stainless steel polishing videos on YouTube) but I do own wet and dry sand paper and Autosol and Wenol polishes. My car will never be an award winning show car so all I want is to make things better that I found them. In this case, a short piece of stainless steel trim. When I removed the trim, it was dirty (muddy) on the back and spider-web scratched on front (exposed) side. First thing was to wash the trim in Dawn dish soap and warm water. I used that plastic nail brush to do the work. Once that was done, I started wet sanding the exposed side with 400, 800, 1000, 1500 and 2000 grit wet and dry sandpaper, while under warm running water. Periodically I would check for remaining scratches and sometimes start over at 400 and work up again, as needed. When I was happy (enough - remember I am not shooting for perfect, just better (maybe way better)), I polished the exposed surface with AutoSol a couple of times. Ended up using Kleenex to do the polishing. Ended up much much better. 4. Reassembling the trim and clips and installing back on the car. So now I had a newly painted area, rehabbed clips and cleaned an polished trim. Last thing to do was to put it all together and re-install the trim. I added the rehabbed wire spring clips back into the back of the trim piece - there is a small notch in the rolled edge of the trim that allows you to load the clips into the trim without too much effort. Then I added strips of closed-cell neoprene rubber foam. I cut the width of the foam to fit nicely between the rolled edges of the trim and then I snipped a slot in the middle of the foam piece and slipped the foam over the tangs of the spring clips. Then I went out to the car and positioned the clips so all three lined up with their respective holes in the cowl. When that was done, I placed the tip of the tangs of each spring clip into their holes and banged the trim down with the heel of my hand. I had to adjust the lateral position of the trim maybe 1/16" or so until I thought I had the fore and aft gaps about equal. So that was that. Looks good. Well at least "better", which was my goal. Hope that this helps somebody. The general procedure could be applied to all the stainless trim on my car (if I felt so obliged)  The photos, in about the right order (I hope): Edited by 56D500boy 2022-04-19 11:43 PM (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheStartingPoint.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_RemovingTheTrimAfter66Years.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_RemovingThe66YearsOfCrud.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_SpotPuttyOnTheRemovalScratches.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_AfterSandingTheSpotPuttyAnd3CoatsOfPaint_1.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_AfterSandingTheSpotPuttyAnd3CoatsOfPaint_2.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_RemovingRustFromTheSpringClips_TheRustWashBath.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_RemovingRustFromTheSpringClips_ClipsAfterRustWashAndBrassBrushing.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_RemovingRustFromTheSpringClips_PaintingTheClipsAfterPainting.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_StartingPointForTheTrimPolishing_1.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_StartingPointForTheTrimPolishing_2.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheTrimPieceAfterWetSandingAndPolishing_Front.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheTrimPieceAfterWetSandingAndPolishing_Detail.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheTrimPieceAfterWetSandingAndPolishing_BackWithRehabbedClips.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheTrimPieceAfterWetSandingAndPolishing_BackWithRehabbedClipsAndFoam.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheTrimPieceAfterWetSandingAndPolishing_BackWithRehabbedClipsAndFoam_Detail.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_LiningUpTheRehabbedClipsAndTheBodyHoles.jpg) (RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_SlammingTheNewlyPolishedTrimWithRehabbedClipsAndRubberSealsHome_TheEnd.jpg) Attachments ----------------  RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheStartingPoint.jpg (121KB - 63 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_RemovingTheTrimAfter66Years.jpg (124KB - 62 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_RemovingThe66YearsOfCrud.jpg (104KB - 56 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_SpotPuttyOnTheRemovalScratches.jpg (139KB - 59 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_AfterSandingTheSpotPuttyAnd3CoatsOfPaint_1.jpg (122KB - 63 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_AfterSandingTheSpotPuttyAnd3CoatsOfPaint_2.jpg (146KB - 62 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_RemovingRustFromTheSpringClips_TheRustWashBath.jpg (119KB - 59 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_RemovingRustFromTheSpringClips_ClipsAfterRustWashAndBrassBrushing.jpg (169KB - 63 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_RemovingRustFromTheSpringClips_PaintingTheClipsAfterPainting.jpg (219KB - 56 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_StartingPointForTheTrimPolishing_1.jpg (64KB - 66 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_StartingPointForTheTrimPolishing_2.jpg (50KB - 64 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheTrimPieceAfterWetSandingAndPolishing_Front.jpg (88KB - 61 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheTrimPieceAfterWetSandingAndPolishing_Detail.jpg (92KB - 60 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheTrimPieceAfterWetSandingAndPolishing_BackWithRehabbedClips.jpg (62KB - 55 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheTrimPieceAfterWetSandingAndPolishing_BackWithRehabbedClipsAndFoam.jpg (80KB - 60 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_TheTrimPieceAfterWetSandingAndPolishing_BackWithRehabbedClipsAndFoam_Detail.jpg (79KB - 56 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_LiningUpTheRehabbedClipsAndTheBodyHoles.jpg (110KB - 60 downloads) RehabbingTheCowlTrimOnA56Dodge_SlammingTheNewlyPolishedTrimWithRehabbedClipsAndRubberSealsHome_TheEnd.jpg (107KB - 59 downloads) | ||
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