So my polishing guy left me hanging and I'm forced to polish my own trim. I've noticed on a couple of pieces there's some kind of clear coating and my sisal wheel is taking it off. What is this stuff and how do I remove it? A wire wheel? Fine grit sandpaper? Or should I just keep grinding away at it with the sisal wheel?

 

I assume these are aluminum pieces? That's the anodizing coating you are removing. It isn't supposed to come off. Either you need to get them chemically stripped and re-anodized ($$$) or you need to completely strip and polish them. If you do the latter, the aluminum will eventually loose luster and start pitting unless you continually re-polish it and keep it waxed.

 

Must be. I don't have a magnet to test it with.

 

On my car, I believe the only exterior pieces on a the 67 are the headlight bezels and the vinyl/painted rear roof to body trim that are anodized. The rest can be cleaned with 0000 steel wool with soap and water and then polished.

 

I ran into this exact problem when I was trying to brighten my 72 B85 moldings. I started with 600 grit wet sandpaper and then went to 0000 steel wool. Shocker, it just got duller and duller. THAT's when I realized it was an anodized part. Good thing is that Anodizing doesn't cost as much as chroming and there are a lot of color combinations to choose from. It's getting a lot cheaper now for anodizing as more companies get into the tuner and performance products.

 

Can I just clear coat it once I've polished the anodized coat away?

 

I really don't know if that will work. You can certainly try it on one area and see how it turns out. What I'm not sure about is the CC ability to bond to bare aluminum.

 

I've got a sedan, so I've got a lot more trim than you do. I've gone through it with a refrigerator magnet, and all that trim around the windows as well as the drip rail are crappy aluminum. I think the small pieces of trim on the bottom of the fender are also aluminum, but I want to find a stronger magnet to test them again. There's 22 pieces in all, excluding the headlight bezels. Don't really want to get them all anodized, but I want to get it done the right way. $$$ is right.

 

I used 0000 steel wool with dish soap and water on all my side trim, hood spear, front of hood trim, front fender trim, bumpers, rear trim, tail light bezels, vent windows, and center grill piece where it says Oldsmobile.

I used metal polish on the front and rear windshield trim. My headlight bezels are ok for a driver, basically cleaned and touched up the black paint.

 

This was a huge challenge to restore on my project. The polisher had to send the pieces to a plater to have them re-anodized. Most platers don’t want to fool around with small lots like this, so just finding a source can be a challenge. My parts were sent to Minnesota from Texas. They also had to send some parts back for refinishing because the grain of the metal resulted in a hazy finish.