Hi, friends. I have a '54 Ford Crestline. I'm in the process of removing all the metal trim to have it painted. I am having trouble getting the 2 metal pieces above each door to come off. I have removed screws and coat hooks but the pieces won't come off. Any ideas as to why? I have a pic of the pieces I'm referring to. Thanks for any help!
Use an upholstery trim tool , pry gently and see what happens. The first time is always a big question. At least on old cars you can see the screws - on my daily driver, not a screw in sight.
Do you think that those trim pieces might be "fastened" into a lip ridge or something like that? Or maybe glue from the headline replacement? That would **** but I'm just trying to figure out why without jacking up my headliner done by previous owner.
I just went through a similar problem on an off topic car. The problem ended up being that the metal trim was simply stuck to the vinyl Upholstry. Not glued but more like it had sort of melted itself to the vinyl. Once I figured it out it all came apart easy.
Post over on the 52-59 Ford social group, there are several guys with Crestlines, maybe some one has removed the moldings in the past. HRP
I had hoped this photo in my Body Manual showed all the screws but it don't. I remember on my 51 Vicky there is a screw on a tab behind the visor mount, one behind the interior light cover on the rear molding and a tab behind the rear window molding. Good luck
I'm going to try that. The piece that holds the trim where the courtesy light is is DEFINITELY not glued or "stuck". It has something holding it in. Can barely budge it using a s****er tool, etc.
stanlow69, I wanted to say THANK YOU for your suggestion about removing the roof rail weather stripping. That suggestion revealed that screws were definitely holding the pieces of trim. I had to destroy the weather stripping in the process, ugggh! The window channels had to come off as well BUT I can now access the remaining pieces of trim for painting. Thanks again! Rob/Atlanta
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