Over the past 50 years or so, my 98 convertible has seen many lives - college moving van (with the top down, it fits a queen bed!), well upholstered truck, bike transport, friend cruiser, kid transport, etc.

Along the way the interior stainless steel trim has acquired a few dings. This car has 2 strips of stainless steel on the door and interior quarter panels. Each strip has a shiny, polished side and a less shiny buffed side.

On the car, there are upper & lower horizontal strips which have different lengths. You see this brightwork whenever you're in the car.

Here's what it looks like on the bench:

1966 Olds 98 2 door hardtop interior stainless trims, as viewed from front & back. The (now fragile) pins bend into the door & quarter panel backing board to retain the trim tightly to the panels.

About a year ago, I bought a bunch of used replacements from French Lake Auto Parts in MN intending to replace my original parts with good used ones from a 66 98 2 door hardtop. I finally got around to working on polishing the replacement hardtop parts and quickly found that while the front door strips swap perfectly, the rear quarter strips from the hardtop are longer than the strips in my convertible. I believe the convertible strips are shorter to accommodate the convertible top piston cover, but you'd never have known it without a direct comparison.

I polished up the front door trims and I'm in business there - the shiny side faces down and buffed side faces up so it doesn't blind me, which I think is the way the factory wanted it. Then I tried cutting the a rear test piece to fit. No go, at least not with my skills & tools.

These trim strips are really made of 2 parts: the bright stainless steel we see and tougher, thicker steel it's sandwiched to which was punched to create the retaining pins. I was able to cut a rear test piece to length with a Dremel, but I was unable to remove the steel retention piece from the visible stainless without destroying the stainless. There were 2 problems - 1) the stainless was pressed with great force at the factory to the retention backing - you'd have to bend at least 3' of lip to get it off; 2) over the years, rust has more or less mated these pieces permanently.

For anyone who's followed this far, another effect of the 2 ply construction is that you can't remove the dings, sand & polish the stainless trim. The backing layer is in the way. Cutting the backing layer out selectively to get at the dings for repair is possible, but that's further in than I wanted to go last night. Once you start cutting the backing steel to get at the stainless front, you're almost certain to slice or pierce the very stainless trim you're trying to save.


Test piece Dremel cut to determine if hardtop rear quarter trim can be used on convertibles. Cutting works, but bending the trimmed end to a factory looking shape is beyond my skills & tools.

I'm happy that I can at least fix my front door panels. And with the rear quarters, I could maybe live with the trims disappearing into the piston cover, but I'll know it wouldn't be right.

For now I've decided to live with patina'ed correct parts rather than straighter reconditioned parts.

Maybe one of these days I'll find a 66 98 convertible somewhere with rear trim better than mine, but for now I'm letting sleeping shiny dogs lie.

Cheers
Chris