This trim repair method is not my original idea. In fact it was in 1993 Rod and Custom and later in Auto Restorer magazine. Follow along with my successful attempt at their method along with a few tweaks. So, you finally got around to painting your car. You did it yourself right? Right there in the driveway like me didnt you? fficeffice" /><O>And now its time to put on the chrome trim. Well, not really chrome usually but a combination of stainless, aluminum and chrome plated pot metal. This story is not about the chrome plated pot metal but the stainless and aluminum trim, and how to repair it so it looks great again. If you are like me your projects take longer than you remember because everything else comes before working on the hot rod. Or, in my case, the custom. I was surprised at how beat up my trim was once I dug it up from all the hiding places. I got a lot of photos so I will break up each repaired piece separately in the post. First up, youre going to need some custom home made tools and a drill press. The drill press will be used as an Arbor Press. DON"T TURN IT ON WHILE REPAIRING YOUR TRIM. Actually, why don't we unplug it OK? So I rounded up some pointy things that can be chucked up in my drill press. The Rod & Custom article used the Carrage Bolt. The Auto Restorer article showed a bunch of wooden tools used by hand. I bought a 1/2" oak dowel rod since my chuck will accept a 1/2" drill bit. The blob in the paint cap will be explained in the Aluminum Wheelwell trim repair portion of the post. I wanted to start with one of the more simple pieces of trim. This one is the Drivers side door sill. It is stainless so no annodizing to worry about like you do with some aluminum pieces. The carrage bolt had some raised grade markings on the top and since I did not wish to emboss that into my trim so I had to grind it off. Here's a nice way to accomplish that. If you want a nice concentric point on something like a punch or in this case a nice even dish shape. Chuck it into your cordless drill. Turn on your bench grinder or belt sander. Most bench grinders rotate counter clockwise, or down if you are facing the wheel. Turn your cordless drill on so it is rotating the opposite way, or in this case, UP. It will be pretty simple to get a nice concentric face on the bolt head. Well, I soon discovered this was not going to be the tool for this piece of trim. I still needed to modify it some more. Grind off the sides and now it should fit. A bit of wet sanding with some 360 grit makes a nice smooth surface. If you leave the coarser grind marks in it it may transfer to the part you are trying to repair. That will just make more work for you come finish and polish time. This is a different piece of trim but I didn't take a photo of the drill press on that first piece of trim. This is the leading edge of the hood that I will show you later. So, you chusk your carrage bolt in the drillpress chuck securely. Put something soft and non-maring on your drillpress table. If you don't you will press any imperfections from your table into the face of your trim. I used a black sharpie marker to highlight the inward protruding dents on the trim. When your anvil (carrage bolt) in next to the surface it is hard to see and you don't want to press an "outie" dent right next to the one you are trying to fix. For dents that are going the other way (an outie), you need to support it from the inside and push down from the outside. This was a small pimple caused by the wire clip used to hold the trim on. Someone in the past probably used a rubber mallet putting the trim on. Since this was my first one being repaired I used the carrage bolt to push this pimple down. This was a mistake. It made very small divots that were the edge of my squared off part of the bolt. After that first repair I made up a flat tool out of the Oak. Cut your Oak so it's long enough to bottom out in your chuck. It is hard to tighten it down so it doesn't slide up into the chuck while you are pushing down. You sometimes have to bear down pretty hard to get the dent to move as you will see later. So, now you have pushed out all your dents, or so you think. With stainless trim the next step is wet sanding or possibly using a file to clean it up and make it flat. As you can see, I still have some work to go. Some more pushing with the arbor press. OK, a little more work and some more wet sanding using regular old wet-or-dry 360 grit. There is a tiny depression I didn't work out since I was timing myself on this first one. Other than the tool making I have 1/2 hour in this first piece. I also wanted to see how perfect it needed to be. Just like paint, this small depression did show up, so if you want it perfect keep working at it. So, time to fire up my home made buffer. You got one of those don't you? I made this 10 or so years ago out of an arbor I purchased at a car show. Powering it is an old clothes dryer motor. The main drawback is the motor is 220V, but it runs super quiet and it doesn't take up any bench top room. Buffer safety tips: Wear leather gloves, this trim gets real hot!! You will jerk your hand away subconsciously and possibly loose your grip, thus flinging your newely repaired trim across the room and possibly into something else... Wear safety glasses. Enough said... Wear a dust mask. After a long session on the buffer you will be blowing black boogers. That is unhealthy and never attractive. So, what did we end up with? 360 grit sand marks buff right out of the stainless. As you can see the small imperfections can be seen at the right angle. I got a lot of trim to repair, so I am going to live with this and make sure my finishing is kicked up a notch on the remaining pieces. I got more trim pieces I am going to post up to this, but for now I am going to take a break. I will return soon with more.</O<O</O
Interesting, haven't seen a drill press used in that way before, although the rest of it is fairly familiar to me, having done a lot of trim repairs. Looking forward to seeing more.
The Blob... What the heck was that thing and what is it for. This next piece of trim is the drivers side front wheel well molding. It is aluminum. I did not reuse the wheel well and rocker mouldings when I did the mild customization to my car. This molding was toast by my account and I would say it could not be repaired so no problem if I mess it up. So, I wanted to see if I could repair it. I also wanted to try my hand at repairing an aluminum molding that is annodized to see what challenges there are with that. For everyone that has a non-mainstream car finding replacement trim, mouldings, emblems etc. is a challenge and is expensive. Because I find it interesting I will add a little history about my Chrysler and it's one year model status. Back in the 60's the Big 3 auto manufacturers were using the small custom shops in California to design and develop their next model year car. In 1966 they asked Gene Winfield to build them a car they were calling the 300X. This car went the rounds of the Auto Shows and in 1968 they sold a production version of the car, but for only one year. So, when I go looking for parts they can be hard to find. Gene's 300X So the Blob came about when I thought abour how to hold this big curved piece and how to duplicate the compound contour in the molding. I don't have any idea how the trim was made for these cars. (Ryan, you could find a cool how-to video maybe?) I believe they used some kind of progressive die, where you start with flat stock in a coil. It is formed in a series of dies that progressively add more bends to the material as it travels down the line until it achieves the right shape. It is then sheared to length and fit into a press where the arched shape is pressed into it. Anyways, I wanted to have a die of sorts to use to assist me while I tried to bring this poor molding back to shape. Think of it as a hammer form or another simple device to allow sheet metal to take on a complex shape. I needed a suitable container for my moldable die material. In my case I thought I'd try Bondo. If I was trying to repair something larger, say one of the rocker panels from Ryans Riviera, I'd find an ice cream tub or something like that. In the highly curved repair area I would need to cut down the sides of my spray can cap a bit wider. My die will be made using a good section of the molding since that is what I am trying to return to in the damaged section. First wrap that section of the good area with Saran Wrap to act as a release agent. Gather up your supples. Fill up the spray can cap with the Bondo attempting to work out any air bubbles. Then just mash it in there. The good thing about using Bondo is the short waiting time before it hardens up sufficiently. About 15 minutes later I could try to remove the molding from the new die. A little work with a utility knife to taper the sides and it came right out. The Saran Wrap peeled right off the Bondo and the molding. I know it doesn't look like much but you will see it worked pretty good. A little more trimming so the molding could slip in and out easier. You can see the contour captured in the die. I needed to make a new tool for this molding. I found this old spade bit that would give me a wide narrow tool for fitting into the narrow channels.Using a cutoff wheel I removed the centering point. I left it a little short so I could file off the last bit keeping the spade part flat and perpendicular. I chucked it into the drill press and brought it down to the table to check for no gaps and to verify it was flat to the table. What the die does for you is holds the molding straight while you are pressing down on the molding. Without it the molding wants to twist so that you are pushing not quite in the direction you want it to. Another tool is made. This time a chisel point out of Oak. After a bit You may need to get creative to get it to go where you want. Just free hand with the molding. It is very simple to apply a little or a lot of pressure. Profile returned more or less back to normal. I worked on it a bit with a flat file and as you can see if I was going to use it on my car I would have a bit more dent removal to do. I have spent about an hour and a half on this little experiment. Hopefully you can see that it is possible to repair your trim no matter how bad it may seem. I suppose if I was really going to use this piece I would first remove the anodized coating. I believe Eastwood sells a chemical compound that you soak the part in. Then you should probably anneal the area to soften the aluminum. I have never done this either but I believe the process is to apply soot from a flame to the area. Then you apply lower temperature heat say from a mapp gas torch, heating until the soot disappears. Then you have reached a sufficient temperature to anneal the aluminum. If you polish the repaired trim as I have done it you will be able to see a distinct line where the annodizing and the sanded repaired part meet. If you stripped the annodizing off the trim will require polishing much more frequently than the other annodized parts and held side to side there will be a distinct difference. Hang on folks, I got two more pieces of trim repair to show you.
Next up, the hood leading edge moulding. I have two of these as I lost my original grille to a shady chrome shop up in Cleveland. I have a replacement now but I haven't restored it yet. In the mean time I have been running an excellent Newport grille of the same year. All C-Bodies use the same radiator bulkhead so I figured it would fit when I bid on the Newport grill on EBay. It took me about 3 years to find the replacement 300 grille. The one with the least dents had this hole in the center so I started with this one. I swear I don't remember the car looking this banged up the first few years I drove it around. By now you know the drill. Even the Oak yields when coming up against stainless steel. I still want to make this center crease sharper. Time to locate another tool. I looked through the tool chest and came up with this chisel. Before chucking it up into the drill press I gave it a little tune up. Over to the bench grinder I ground off the small bit of mushrooming on the head. I also put a fresh edge, although not as sharp as usual. I then checked it in the drill press for perpendicularity prior to using it on the molding. I think I am good to go for the flat filing, wet sanding phase. I clamped it into my vise and using files and then the sanding block with 360 wet-or-dry smoothed out all the small waves. The damage on the opposite side had a small portion that was dented underneath a folded flange. I attempted to force a sharp putty knife under the flange but it seemed like I may be creating more problems than I would be fixing. I guess it depends on your desire for perfection. The finished piece. One more trim item to show you...
Last years project was finishing my interior. After being in upholstery jail the previous summer I retrieved the car and purchased a kit from Legendary Interiors in the original Pearl White. It turned out pretty well. After the job it was time to attack the repair of the trim again. The main difference with this piece is it is non-annodized allumiinum. It was noticably softer and easier to move the few dents in the surface. The main trick with the non-annodized aluminum is cleaning it up. I used some aluminum wheel cleaner and a scrub brush to clean all those grooves. Make sure you use long sleeved gloves and eye protection. That stuff is a pretty strong chemical. After rinsing it off I was ready to polish the step plate. After a little time on my regular buffer I found out it would take a long time that way. Non annodized aluminum creates lots of black residue prior to looking shiny so with a little web research I decided to give one of those new fangled powerball's a try. It did the job faster but you need to find a good way to hold down the piece you are polishing or once again it will shoot off the bench unless held down. I have a small version of a WorkMate that worked well. Well, thats my version of a tech article. I hope you found it useful and it will give you the confidence to repair your own trim instead of sending it out.
Best tech for fixing trim I've seen on here, probably because it's how I've been doing it for years after reading a how to artical (probably in R&C in 93) on using a drill press as an arbor press. My trim repair got much better and easier since I started using the process you show here. Quick tip on removing anodising from aluminum. I use Easy-Off oven cleaner. Spray it on, wait a few (20 minutes or so) and rinse it off with water. Just don't forget and leave it on overnight, the part might be gone come morning! Easy-Off will eventually eat all the way thru I found out the hard way.
Thanks Metalman, that's why I wrote the post because I found it to be much easier than using a trim hammer. Nice tip on the oven cleaner.
Great post. I have thought about the bondo and saran wrap, wondered if it would work. My favorite tech post-applicable for a lot of us regular guys.
I never thought of my drill press as an arbor press. Great idea to control amount of force used. Thanks
I've straightened alot of trim, never thought of using the drill press. Thanks for a great thread. JJ
"never thought of using the drill press. Thanks for a great thread." I agree, thanks for the help. Dale Cleveland OH
Expensive "bondo" you're using there! Probably is the best use for the cheapest, sandpaper-clogging Bondo (besides filling old lockset holes in doors) I've seen. I dug your tech. Right on for the ideas.
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