Hello All,

So i've been slowly working on a pair of grilles i got from a fellow member here on Classic Olds.

I've decided to photograph the process (Rob, i'm doing my best to live up to your thread's expectations) Here's my best shot!

Currently on my Car, i have grilles from a 71 cutlass 's' that look like they've been through the mud and laundry a few too many times.

Grilles i purchased, 72 4-4-2 grilles in need of a full restoration. Epoxy, bondo, TLC, the whole bit. I decided to take up the challenge.


What i did was create small molds from pieces of thick aluminum foil, filled the gaps with epoxy and bondo, then sanded to fit, and as you will see, it doesn't look to bad in the end!


Also Please keep in mind, my car is not a show car, i'm 24 and this is my first Olds. i'm trying my best to save my nickels and dimes to get it up to driver quality.

Thanks for reading,

Tony

 

Tony, Now that is car crafting at it's best. Nice Job!

tom
68 442 (headlights and rings are on)
70 F85
95 Aurora

 

Very, very nice job, Tony. You may have found a 2nd job in the process! Am sure there are other grilles out there that need some "help"! Keep up the good work!!!

 

looks good tony good idea on the foil mold

 

Great job looks terrific.

 

Looks very nice!
Can you elaborate on how you painted them and with what? I need to repaint mine next year.

 

Wow -I bet that guy who sold them to you wishes he had them back!!

 

Wow I'm thouroughly impressed, I'm so impressed I ran to my garage pulled out a box of some 69 grills and took my wifes tin foil and am going to try this. I was going to trash them but it looks like you gave them a new lease on life.

 

now Tony has me wondering, my 72s tailights have a couple of the dividers chunked out like the grills had. I think his method may work for those too. question is that a common issue ? I have a spare set of tailights but they all have the same issue ?

 

Hello All,

Thanks for the support! I grabbed some more pictures off my hard drive last night and will be posting some more as the day goes on of the Painting process and little tips that i figured out, especially with regards to the lips where paint can run and make the job kind of messy.

Thanks Joe! i'm pretty happy with how they've turned out. I'm all about getting older parts and bringing them back to life. Heck, i've done that with most of the bits and pieces of my car.

Cool! I'm glad i sparked some interest for you guys to keep your old grilles and work on em'. Just keep in mind, one layer of tin foil i noticed was not always enough, you might have to double up or triple up.

The foil i used was the kind of stuff you use to cover the Turkey at thanksgiving. It's a little bit thicker and really keeps the epoxy where it needs to be.

Hey Dean,

Do you have pictures of your rear taillights? I did a small bit of patchwork on my own tail lights. and they turned out pretty well. As long as the chunked part is where the silver paint should be, i dont see why it shouldn't work!

What i did with my taillights is filled the deep spots with bondo, and then mixed some Epoxy and painted that over the bondo so that it wouldn't crack. I'll see if i can grab some pictures when i'm over at my parents (the car is there).

 

yup on the silver parts, did you find a close match to the silver too ? mines showing red in a lot ofplaces it would be nice to fix the chunking and repray the silver too

 

 

Tony, excellent work and well documented. You're welcome on those pics.

Could you tell me where you bought that silver paint? It looks absolutely correct in the pics.

 

Hey Joe,
Sure no worries, what I did is I brought your grilles to the store and tried my best to match the cap. I bought it at Canadian Tire, it's our local hardware store chain here in Canada. The can reads the following.

Tremclad Gloss Aluminum Rust Paint Oil Based (made by Rust-oleum)

 

Looks great but I am a little lost. What exactly did you do on the mold process? Can you explain better or show more pics?

 

Here's a link.


http://www.rustoleum.ca/CBGProduct.asp?pid=7

COLOUR:* 27006B 522 - Aluminum
CLICK ON A COLOR SWATCH TO VIEW COLOR NAME

 

Sure,

What you do is cut a piece of good hard foil to about 2" ( the stuff they use to wrap around wine bottle corks works great too because the bond doesn't stick to it.)

Wrap it around the bottom of the little slat so it makes a kind of cradle for the bondo to set in. Your foil will stick out a little bit. I use lots of tape to keep it in place. (I did one slat at a time) so the whole process took a couple afternoons.

Then, once you have your mold, pack it full an let it dry. Later you can shape it with a sharp pen knife.

I got a good picture of a mold but it's on my phone still. I'll try and upload it when I get home.

 

Don't be set aback if your mold doesn't make your bondo completely flat or straight. I spent most of my time with a nail file / emory board trying to get the slats slanted at the right angle. Some drug sore nail files i picked up are a little bit harder and fit in the slats real well.

 

Hello All,

So here is a final picture of what the grilles look like. Emblems in place, painters tape removed, and paint pretty well cured.



Hope this motivates you all to keep workin' on those grills! Once i get around to it, i'm probably going to be restoring a pair of 71 Cutlass 's' Grilles that were originally on the car.

Cheers,

Tony

 

looks great Tony

you have motivated me to send you my spare tail lights for similar repairs LMK when they're ready LOL

The silver does look like a very good match !!!

 

Lol, Thanks! I've been messing around with my own tail lights these past couple nights trying to fix em' up. I'll post some pictures when i'm done.

it'd be great if i could actually see an original cutlass sometime (in my parts, those are few and far between.) So i could actually compare the texture of the paints...

 

Great job. I'm also on a tight budget and have picked up a few ideas from this thread.

 

Thanks Guys! And yeah, this definitely saves some cash.

On the grilles i spent..

-14 dollars for the two cans of paint
- 9 dollars on a small tub of bondo (still alot left)
- 4 euros for a bottle of champagne in europe so i could use the foil for my mold (good excuse eh?)

The only thing i'm completely unsure about is the colour of the orange for the 4-4-2 emblems. Does anyone have a good match for that?

 

Tony,
Here are a couple of shots of my 442 grills. They are not OEM, I bought them from Fusicks. Hope the color helps you a bit.





I do have questions about mounting the grills. Have you done it in your car? The problem I'm having is lining it up with the little tab that's supposed to slide into the stone shield. There's an alignment tab on both sides of the grill. (not talking about the tabs with the holes). Did you have any issues getting the grills to install and line up?
Can you please post a couple of pics showing the backside detail like the one I'm putting here? I need to make comparison between aftermarket and OEM.

thx

 

Hey Allan,

Sure no worries, i can grab a couple pictures tonight, i still have not installed my grilles since i'm in the process of putting the final finishing touches on my paintjob.

Those alignment tabs on the OEM grilles were broken, so i had to remake them with bondo/epoxy. I'm really hoping that they bolt in nicely and mate up with the stone shield.

The colour of my grilles seems "pretty" close, but yours look a little bit smoother and glossy-er. I guess that's the price that I pay for painting the grilles on my back gallery. (i'm not allowed to paint inside, even if it's in my man-cave)...

I noticed something kind of odd, Allan, the piece that i highlighted in your picture (the one in red) is definitely not on my grilles... Not sure if it broke off, but i shall investigate tonight.



In terms of the fit, i should be installing my grilles on either late saturday or early sunday. i shall let you know how they line up. and grab some photos.

Has anyone else ever compared the OEM grilles to the repro's from Fucisk?

 

Quite impressive young Jedi...like WOW, I've tried before but can't get a formula to stick n stay. Just pops off, how did u portion the Bondo n epoxy together? And whay brand etc epoxy did u use? Thanks for the motivation! Brett

 

Hey Brett,

No worries! I found it really hard to portion the epoxy and bondo together as well.

I used regular-old JB-Weld (the red and black tubes) and the process was as follows.

First i filled in the crack/hole/groove with bondo, let it set for about an hour then peeled off the foil. I took apart a clothespin and affixed some sandpaper to it so i could really file the bondo down and make it smooth.

Then, once the bondo had set into a nice shape. I would mix a little bit of epoxy. And use those dollar store paintbrushes to paint it on around the bondo. So i wanted the weak bondo on the inside, and the hard epoxy on the outside to really keep it in shape. Also, 800 grit sandpaper is what i used to sand the slats.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Tony

 

Tony, the area you boxed is one of the main attachement points for the grills. Even my 72 OEM Cutlass S grills has it. Maybe it was broken off? Does it look like there used to be something there?

 

Tony, I took some pics of the backside mounting on my grills. Now I'm upset. Turns out Ken did a **** poor job installing them.

For starters, the grills are supposed to be mounted with clips and screws. If you look at this pic, there is nothing holding the grill at the top, and there is a nut/bolt at the bottom. Not the way it's supposed to be. Note: you can clearly see the 2 mounting tabs that are also on the 442 grill


This side appears to be done right, but he used old bolts when he was supposed to redo these with new ones. I guess he must have figured that I wouldn't ever see these once the air dam went in.


I have absolutely no idea what he was thinking about on this side. You can clearly see the wrong fastener, and in addition he torqued it so much it twisted and cracked the mounting tab! I so want to go find him and kick his a$$!


I think I'm going to have to drop the bumper to take these out and replace them. What did you do to get your grills out?

 

Hey Allan,

Oh man, that's defintily an eyesore when i see a grill fastner torqued down and snapping the mounting point. These grilles are really expensive and i'd hate to see that happen after all the time that i've put into my own.. Probably 60 hours into these grills..

To take the grilles out of my car, i really had to soak all of the mounting bolts/fastners in WD-40 before i started for about an hour. It seems every clip i take off the car crumbles into my hand.. By the end to get the stone shield out i had to remove the bumper (hell of a job) as well as the headlight mounting plastic.

Honestly Allan, without taking out the bumper, i'm sure that the stone shield would almost crack, perhaps someone can correct me on this. But bumper out seems like a way easier approach.

On a side note, MAN is the inside of your radiator support nice and painted, looks kinda like powdercoat, mine totally needs to be sandblasted/painted. One more thing to add to the list i guess!

 

You must know how I felt. Even though they are just Cutlass S grills, when they went in they were NOS out of the GM box. I'm still pissed about how they are mounted and damaged.

I'll also be soaking them. They've been there since 1986. 25 years is enough time to build up a good coating of rust. I plan to get new fasteners and bolts to avoid the problems that already exist. Maybe I'll end up selling these grills since I won't need them anymore. It's too bad about the crack, maybe I can use some plastic weld on it to close up that crack - sort of like the windshield commercials.

I kind of thought it would be the bumper removal to get them in/out. My stoneshield is cracked so it's going to have to come out anyway. I couldn't see any way of doing that short of removing the bumper. I have a buddy I can get to help me. Already have the fender areas where the bumper might hit taped off with 3 layers of painting tape. From what I see, there are 10 bolts that have to be undone. Leave the 2 upper ones on the frame mount till last. That will stabilize the bumper until you pull it off. Grab it by the center lower holes so you can pull it out evenly. Putting it back you're going to need a helper.

Thx Tony, actually I'm thinking of redoing it. Most of the gray you see is really only dirt or mud splatter. It has a protective coating of some crap that's been making my life a living hell as I'm doing my suspension and frame. Oven cleaner hardly makes a dent in this crap. On the + side it's done a remarkable job protecting the bottom of the car. I was under the floor pans and rear susp the other day and it looked like it had just been freshly painted.

LMK how your install goes. Did you ever find out whether the tab you mentioned on my 442 grill was broken off on yours? One more thing, the mount on the outside of the grill (closest to the headlights) is special for 442 grills. You can probably adapt yours to fit. I bought the right mounting bracket on ebay a couple years ago in anticipation of the 442 grill install.

 

Install is looking good so far! I took a look at the bottom of my grilles, there is no indication anywhere that there was once a tab here other than the two slanted ones that i believe attach to the stone shield... I'll have to check my car to see if there is a mounting point for it. Was it possible that grilles were made differently on earlier 71 models as compared to late production 72's?

That's exactly what i did! Except i didnt have the help of anyone at the time. As long as you take all the headlamp/signal/electrical components out before you remove the bumper, you dont have to worry about dangling wires snapping.

Those grilles were installed a year before i was Born! Musta been a heck of a lot more NOS stuff back then when these cars were only over a decade old... The only nos parts i've installed on my car were a horn contact set for my pretty original sport wheel i bought off evilbay.

Have you decided where you're going to get the fastners? I find it especially hard to get fastners for my emblems and whatnot.

Allan, you could definitely fix the crack up with some JB Weld, if you mix it really well, then sand it down and paint it after with Tremclad gloss aluminum, noone will notice. Can't complain for 7 bucks a can!

Cheers,

Tony

 

Don't jump the gun and accept the repops as gospel. The 442 grills I bought are from Fusick. I trust their parts but I know they are not NOS parts. There are some minor molding flaws on the grills but this car isn't going to be concours.

Back in 86 there were tons of NOS parts available - for a good $ too. I bought new front fenders right from the dealer for around 225.00 each. Came in great big boxes I loaded in my bus and threw into the truck when I got back to the depot. Got $hit from my boss though...

Yup, I can get all those fasteners at partsource. I think they are the same as Autozone in the US. They're cheap too and no shipping or paypal charges like evilbay...

FWIW Tony, I'm working on this project by myself too. So all the things I'm suggesting to you are based on just one guy doing the work. I will figure a way to put the bumper back on and re-align it. BTW, I don't have any electrical hookups in my bumper right now. As part of my front end restoration I took out the park/signal lamps and redid them. Here's how they turned out:

First you start with crap. I cleaned it with 'agent orange'. This is prior to spending about 40 minutes with various wire wheels and dremel bits to get the gunge cleaned off (both inside and outside)


Not very pretty, and corrosion was starting. I noticed on both insides that the factory was really sloppy putting only the bare minimum of paint in here. It was done quickly and there were lots of areas with paint drips


The connector is actually copper, but I decided to paint it gold. If I left it copper it would just corrode over again fairly quickly. There was a bit of pitting on the backside of the housing that I just couldn't do anything about.


The front was also wire wheeled, and shot with high build gray primer before getting a couple coats of Krylon Ivory


The lenses are installed for now. I have new silicone rubber gaskets on order from ILT. I think they are one of the few companies that make the right gaskets for these housings. Most of the others like Millenium industries and 1A Auto sell cheap gray thin foam gaskets. They would work but are definitely not the correct look.

From start to finish on these was about 3 hours for the pair. + another 2 days for the Krylon to dry inside the house at a decent temp.

And for the finishing touch: The lenses were NOS replacements

 

Those connectors look amazing! I'm really impressed. Mine are really crummy looking. I'm going to have to pull them off and give them a nice restoration as well!

That krylon ivory paint sure does look good. I've gotta try to find some of that out here in Montreal, our Krylon selection is really crummy at canadian tire on my end of the city.

Right now i still have the old gaskets on the lenses, i should probably change them but i think i'll wait until i get the restoration started with.

I'm all about giving parts a second chance at life. Honestly, i figure if these parts have lasted 40 years with all what they've gone through. I'll put my bets that they're going to last another 40.

I actually recently to advantage of the welding sale at canadian tire a couple hours ago. Bought myself a lincoln 180 mig-pak welding kit. Hopefully i can get most of my sheet metal work done in the next couple days so i can spray my car with a few nice coats of colour (it's currently on primer)

Have you taken your bumper off yet and manage to get to your grilles?

 

Thx Tony,
It takes a long time to clean them up. I used wire wheels, dremel and 220 sandpaper. The secret is not to be in a rush or you will gouge to deep on the wire wheels and abrasive discs. Finished product is only 20% of the time spent. Prep is everything. I used Krylon Ivory, but you can use pretty much anything you want. Ivory isn't really the proper color, but it's light and in this case its a rust inhibitor. With the lenses on it looks perfect. BTW the original color was pure white. When you take off your lenses, also check the socket the 1157A sits in. If it's corroded you'll want to replace it. No point in just trying to clean it - maybe use some dialectric grease in the socket to keep it from rusting again.

The old gaskets are a rubber silicone product and work very well, not like the cheesy Millenium replacement gaskets I ordered a few years back. Right now I think I can get the proper gaskets from ILT. Price is not bad - shipping is always stupid though. I have an order I'll be placing in the next couple of days. Want me to order you a set and include it in my shipping? I don't think it would cost that much to send them in an envelope to you. LMK if you're interested. The gaskets cost 11.50/set Part number INL10963 if you want to look them up. http://www.inlinetube.com/PDF%20cata...dsmobile08.pdf Page 136

I have not taken the front bumper or grills out yet. Been working on the Power steering. yesterday I redid the gearbox (about 6 1/2 hours):
Before:


After:




I plan to put the same effort into fixing my stone shield, grills and bumper braces/brackets. Lots of times the little things like that get overlooked. While I've got stuff apart, I'll do the side marker lights too.

 

Update on the Grille situation.

Recently got a set of AWESOME looking front end parts from our friendly neighborhood cutlassdepot.



Currently i have painted them Bamboo, but here is a preliminary picture of the fitment on primer.

 

Looking good Tony! I bet those OEM grills slide in /out with no problem at all. Can't wait to see them on your car!

 

The fit is PERFECT, i need to remake two of the tabs on the top of the feilles but apart from there it should bolt up really nicely.

I really hope that i can find a proper set of screws that i can use to bolt the grilles to the stone shield. After all this work i really dont want one of those tabs to snap.....

 

Use a caliper to measure the hole in the grill tab. Anything going into plastic will be self tapping. Use machine screws with a washer collar - there's a bigger and better flush surface holding the grill.

 

Looks good, Tony. Really nice work on the grilles.

I wish mine "fit perfectly", but at least the grilles are mounted to the stone shield now.