BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)

[Rktpwrd]

As promised.

I still have the upper windshield moulding left to do to finish off the front, but I’m almost out of my magic elixir that makes giving these the brushed look (more easily) possible. I’ll have to grab another can of it to do more trim.

D.

 

[BuickOldsPontiac]

Donovan, glad to hear that your eye should be fine. Olds Cool keeps getting better, beautiful work!

 

[motorheadmike]

Great... Just great. This guy does better work as a bloody cyclops than most folks do with two good eyes.

 

[Rktpwrd]

Great... Just great. This guy does better work as a bloody cyclops than most folks do with two good eyes.

That’s “monocular” to y’all there Mr. Mike!
Thank you sir, I appreciate it!

 

[Longroof79]

Glad to hear that your eye issue was a temporary setback and that you're on the mend. It's good to see you back on the project again.
I love the brushed trim. I always did like that look.

 

[HAFROD]

OK so I'm gonna eat crow. The brushed trim looks pretty sweet. Good job Donovan

 

[Rktpwrd]

What’s up guys.

I’m gonna deviate a little bit from my usual updates to post a procedure that I think may help many others of you.
As those of you that read through my posts on a semi-regular basis know, I’ve been working on some of the trim for the car lately. Since nearly all of our G bodies share at least similar trim, I thought that this may be of some use to others.

I’m sure there’s already a million videos on YouTube on this subject, but if y’all are anything like me, you either don’t trust the individual doing the work (too many things can be fudged behind the scenes off camera), any farther than you could throw them, or the subject being covered isn’t exactly the same as what you’re dealing with.

I had inadvertently installed a piece of trim on the car that was either wrong for the application, or was a factory screwup. It’s the vertical passenger’s side piece for the back window, and after installing it I found it was about 3/8” too short. You can see in this closeup that it doesn’t sit underneath the lower trim like it’s supposed to, rather it sits flush with it:

Here’s the correct one that it should have, note that it’s slightly longer:

The only problem was, the longer one that I needed to switch it out for had a B.A.D. (Big *ss Dent) in it:

To start the repair, I grabbed a small brass drift and an equally small ball pein hammer. Using the drift to concentrate my taps only on the affected area, I started leveling out the dent from the backside on a flat piece of steel stock I had laying around:

A light sand on the top side with 220 on a flat block starts to map out where the highs and lows are. The sanded areas are either already level or slightly high, the unsanded ones are where it’s still low.

Take great care not to go too heavy handed on this stuff, the trim on out cars is only thin extruded aluminum and not actually stainless or chrome like on the older cars. It doesn’t take much to move it around.

A bit more work with the drift and then the pick end of a body hammer got it closer, again sand it lightly with the block to gauge the progress:

Most of the dent was coming out nicely, but I still had a low area that I couldn’t access with the tools I was using due to being under the edge of the inside of the trim, so I used a small nail set (a very small diameter punch would be more preferable) on an angle to access this area. After some work with that and a bit more light sanding, it was nearly gone:

I still had a low area that I wasn’t happy with right next to the raised profile in the trim, so some more very light work with the nail set in this area picked it up to the right height. Always do the hammer and picking work on your hard flat surface, this is what will prevent you from going too high with it.
Note the row of tiny little dimples next to the profile line, that’s the are where the picking was concentrated:

Again, a bit more sanding on the top side, and it’s nearly entirely gone. Just a bit was left right tight to the raised profile line...

...but some sandpaper folded over a couple times to stiffen up the edge and a bit more sanding is all it’ll take to make that go away:

Here you go, the finished product. No more dent, and you’d never know it was ever there:

And to prove it’s the same piece I started with, here’s the backside. All those little tiny marks are where the hammer and drift marks were concentrated to level out the dent.

This is not a complicated or difficult process, nor does it take any fancy tools. It’s not terribly time consuming either, the whole thing took me maybe 20-30 minutes start to finish.
Here’s exactly what I used, the only thing not shown is the steel block I used as my level surface. The towel is used to clean the pores of the sandpaper as they clog up during sanding.

For me, the process is nearly complete because I’m leaving my trim in this state for the brushed look. But if you were wanting to bring your trim back to the polished stage or even for paint, you’d proceed from here with progressively finer and finer grits of sandpaper. For a state that’s ready for polish, I’d recommend at least 1500 grit or finer. I’ve restored other trim and brought it back to a fully polished state on The Juggernaut this way.

Hopefully this helps some of you guys out, especially those of you trying to make due with less than perfect original stuff to begin with.

- Donovan

 

[ssn696]

Donovan,

Do you top-coat the aluminum after refinishing and brushing it? All that sanding must go through the anodizing...

 

[Canon_Mutant]

Need to do this exact thing on my DS molding. Was wondering how to fix it?

Was caught in a tornado here in Ks MANY years ago and pulled under an overpass like they say you should NOT do but then it hit before I could even get out of the car and run up under the girder. Not sure my car ever actually floated but I swear I felt 0G sitting in the driver's seat. Both stop signs on 4x4s on the exit ramps ahead and behind me snapped like toothpicks when it hit. I thought I was toast but the only thing it did was put a sizable dent in that external B-pillar trim and a couple tiny rock chips up front and there was a small missing section of the 442 stripe on the that wrap around front bumper molding. IT BLEW THE TAPE OFF . . .

Another near miss in the life of Garth . . .

Anyway, great to hear on your eye. Not that what you had wasn't serious but those ulcers can be literally blinding. Got my *ss chewed big time by my Rheumatologist when I finally saw her for not getting to the ER immediately. I made an appointment with my regular optometrist for like the following Wed or something and she chewed my *ss too, and sent me to the hospital. For all I knew it was some kind of weird stye or insect bite because the rim of my eye was involved too? Anyway, just sharing information here for you younger pups. Don't mess around with these things . . .!!!!

 

[Rktpwrd]

Donovan,

Do you top-coat the aluminum after refinishing and brushing it? All that sanding must go through the anodizing...

Quinn, you bring up a couple of good points.
As you noted, the trim is protected and kept looking shiny from the factory with a hard clear anodized coating.
This stuff can and does clog up the sandpaper pretty quickly, and can be a real PITA to get out of the nooks, crannies and edges. To properly refinish and restore the trim, it pretty much all needs to be removed.

A great, cheap and highly effective way to remove the anodizing is to raid the wife’s cleaning stash under the sink. EasyOff heavy duty oven cleaner does a great job of stripping the anodizing off without damaging the aluminum underneath. This is the “magic elixir” I was referring to earlier in a previous post.

What I’ve found to work best is to spray a liberal coat of it on and let it sit for 15 minutes. At the end of that 15, rinse the piece thoroughly with hot water and dry off. Give the part a second coat and let sit for an additional 15, then rinse and dry again.

The first application starts to eat into the smooth surface starting the removal process, while the second seems to finish the job. In my experience, I’ve found that some pieces have a thicker coating on them than others, but this two stage method seems to work well on everything.

Once the anodizing is removed, the rest of it is a relative breeze. Usually even red ScotchBrite will bring up the surface nicely.

To answer your question regarding protecting it afterwards, I’m going to play that by ear for now. Aluminum oxidizes fairly slowly, so I’m not anticipating it to look much different in a year or so. However if I start to notice staining or other unwanted side effects, I’ll pull it all back off and clear them with a semi-flat clear. Most of the trim isn’t that hard to get on and off anyways.

I suppose re-anodizing afterwards is another option, but I imagine it would likely be pricey and possibly cost prohibitive. I can’t speak to that as I haven’t priced it out.