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front grill polishing

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J

Jerry

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I am finally getting ready to put on the grill. It needs a lot of polishing. At some point in the past, someone painted the car without masking the grill well. One slat has a small dent. The slats on the BJ8 look like polished aluminum. I assume that means they are delicate. Any suggestions as I proceed?

I also pulled out the surround which had been wrapped in bubble pack. It had lost the chrome in many parts and was dented also. I looked in the MOSS catalog and they are $748 new. Lucky for me, two came with the car. the other is in ok shape, I will see how it polishes up.
It has been nice to see the body panels go on the car. Finally seems like progress.

Jerry
BJ8
 
Jerry,
The alluminum slats can be polished with any good metal polish (semichrome is great). The overspray can probably be removed with laquer thinner. If your dented slat is very bad I would suggest removing it and working on the dent then re-revit it to the unit. The surround is probably one of the few items that is cheaper to have rechromed than buy new and it probably fits better. Have a good day!

John
 
Moss carries individual slat replacements that can be rivited in place of ones that are damaged beyond repair.
 
the slates are backordered. I will start polishing. So is that chrome on top of aluminum or very thin steel?

Jerry .

By the way, does paint stick to stainless steel very well?
 
Jerry,

I used the following process to restore my grill.
First take a couple pictures of it and take some notes for future reference. Drill out all the rivets and remove all the slats. The slats have anodize plate on the alunimum that will have to be removed prior to polishing. I used a few spoons of red devil lye mixed in a bucket of water to do the removal. If you use the lye be very careful to wear protective rubber gloves and goggels as it can burn you quite badly. You only have to dip the slats in the soloution for about 15 or twenty seconds and when you take them out they will be smoking. Avoid inhaling the fumes by wearig a resperator. Once you do this rinse the slats with cold water. Tap out any small dents with a flat punch or you can make tools to use from various round stock. tap the spots then mark over them with a black magic marker, then lightly sand the entire front with 400 sand paper. This will leave black in the low spots to indicate were you need to tap some more. Then if you have access to a blast cabinet
lightly glass bead blast the sides of the slats.This will make them a pretty nice matt shade of grey. Once you have done the blasting the front can be buffed with a buffing wheel and the proper rouge for alunimum. If I remember correctly it was a white bar of compound. Follow that up with mothers polish on the buff wheel then by hand and it will look like new or better. The bead blast also works great on carburetors. I have also heard of using oven cleaner to strip the anodize but I have never tryed that method. I did use the above process and probaly had about 30 hours in the job but I just did it a few hours at a time and was pleased with the results.
Bob
 
BlueRidge1 said:
Jerry,
I used a few spoons of red devil lye mixed in a bucket of water to do the removal.
Bob
Click to expand...

I've never restored a grille, but regular oven cleaner is supposed to work well to remove anodizing from aluminum as well. Neil
 
Remember that the anodizing is not just decorative, it is also a corrosion inhibitor. The polished aluminum will look great, but will require re-polishing over time. Those slats will be a bear to polish in place. I chose to buy the replacement grill, which does look very good. It's not that expensive, as I recall. I did have the surround re-plated, however. It's chrome plated brass. The surround lip is chrome plated steel.
 
I repaired mine then sent it out to be polished, but mine was in pretty good shape. Just a couple small dings.
 
I repaired/restored mine. I removed the slats to repair dings. If the dings were in the upper or lower section of the slat I moved them to the ends of the grille where only the center portion of the slat is visible. I left the anodize on as my car is a driver and I did not want to have to polish it often. Have a good day!

John
 
I polished up the surround today. It came out OK. Not perfect. There are a few scratches, and the metal around the rivits has swirl marks from what looks like an orbital sander. I may have to get it chromed. I will do the slates this weekend and see how they come out.

Jerry
 
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