Does anyone have any good tips, or products they have used to clean up old chrome. I have a chrome grille that has some surface rust and dull spots on it, but nothing major and i havent found anything to clean it up very well. I know someone has to have some tricks
Naval jelly, in my experience, pretty much eats chrome. This especially pertains to pitted chrome. You can use naval jelly and then clear over the metal. It doesnt look that bad, but it is noticable. Im pretty sure this is/was common practice on old chrome wheel centers.
Steel wool ruins plating. The steel is scratching off the surface crud, but it's also scratching the plating. I don't care if it has naval jelly on it or not. Don't use it. Use some of the buffing compound (on a rag) that you'd use to buff out a just-wetsanded paint job. I like Wizards Turbo Cut since it smells nice. Someone had asked this question before, so I grabbed some compound and just rubbed on a section of this Stude tail light. Since the compound isn't harder than the surface it shouldn't ruin it. Sometimes it works real easy and sometimes takes some effort but it's worth it for the results.
go to a local parts store or a detail store and ask them what some good things to use are. My friends when he was restoring his impala he just took off the original chrome and polished them really well with polish he got form the parts store and they look really good! Also ask someone at a paint shop. They can probably point you in the right direction
A little kerosene on a rag will clean it up temporarily, say to take some photos or to go out to a show. Another trick is to buff with crumpled aluminum foil. The foil is softer than chrome and good to remove the white surface crud on old hard chrome. I did the bumpers on my '64 Corvair, after 33 years in storage, and they went from sick to shining (and stayed that way) in twenty minutes.
Aluminum foil still scratches the chrome, just take a light to it after. Atleast it has when i've tried it, I may have been doing it wrong. The polishing compound is a good idea, I'll have to try that sometime.
Yeah, the auto parts store in my hometown is called Automotive Supply, but I'm sure any parts store will carry this or something similar. It's not a specialty product. The other good thing is it's like $18 a bottle, versus 3M stuff which is way more. The 3M is better for buffing paint, but if you're just going to use it to polish rust stains off of chrome this stuff is great. I'm not a fan of aluminum foil either. Rubbing one metal against another to shine the other one up is just a bad idea and isn't necessary. If you have a bench grinder, you can put a buffing wheel on it and use this same **** to polish stainless pieces. Not quite as good as different bars of rouge if you have to sand the stainless first, but awesome if you're just putting the shine back on. Stuff like Flitz and Simichrome are also excellent products but are way expensive. If you have something small and delicate I'd say spend the money on Simichrome, but if you have big ol' rusty bumpers or old chrome wheels to polish I'd use the buffing compound.
Semichrome will put a polish on just about anything. Its also strong enough to burn through paint. I used some on my dump tube caps, and license plate bracket(which started out as a piece of aluminum stock that I wet sanded smooth and took the casting marks out of it) and both of which took a decent shine just hand polishing.
Aluminum foil and coca-cola worked ok for me. It didn't help remove any pitting but it did get rid of the surface rust.
Yea my grille has no pitting at all, and only a little amount surface rust. It just doesnt shine like i know it can. Ive only tried a chrome polish, but i think that particular polish would only work good on polishing newer chrome
Marine supply: you are on the right track. I don't remember the name of the product, but it comes in a blue can. It is like wool tufts soaked in some sort of polish. You pull off a wad and use that to polish the chrome. Removes rust and oxidation and leaves a protective coating behind.
The stuff in the blue can is "Never Dull" and it does work quite well, especially on aluminum wheels.
Are you referring to a '66 Chevy pickup truck grille? Are you sure the grille is chromed and not anodized aluminum? Because anodized aluminum will look kinda hazy always, it won't shine like chrome unless it's new. If you have rust stains, the buffing compound will clean it off the anodized just like it will for chrome, but don't expect the grille to look as good as say a newly chrome bumper does. It's not supposed to look like that. You can strip anodizing off of aluminum and polish it for a brighter shine, but it becomes a huge task to keep the aluminum constantly polished, because without the anodizing it's exposed and it will corrode.
Squablow, Its actually a 61' Chevy grille on my 66. It is chrome, but the original grille on my truck was the aluminum your a talking about. That was some tough **** to make shine!
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