theoldsrocket

how do you clean the trims?

70Post

Frankly, there's not much you can do. The two pieces of trim are aluminum and they are anodized (which is leaves a hard coating on top of and into the surface of the aluminum).

You can play with a bit of wheel polish, etc but any staining, etc that doesn't come out with that is likely there for good...unless you strip the anodizing off the aluminum and then go through a sanding/polishing/buffing process to shine up the now-exposed aluminum surface.

GreekDog

I have a similar issue.

@70post: what do you reccommend doing? removing the trim and replacing?

jensenracing77

the best i found is to take them off and sand them down and polish them.

507OLDS

I rarely ever find console trims that look real nice,and the upper ones are even harder to find nice at all.They are usually scratched-up pretty good.I wet-sand them,to remove the scratches & all of the annodizing,then buff/polish them.If you really wanted to,you could wet-sand everything,then have them re-annodized,if you can find someone to do it.

70Post

Greekdog---same thing as what Jensen and 507 mention above...strip them down and sand/polish/buff to your heart's desire.

You can speed things up a bit by soaking the piece in HD Easy Off oven cleaner first. Spray it on, wrap it in plastic to keep the stuff from drying out, and let it sit an hour or so (you can periodically unwrap it and spray a bit more on). This will strip the hard anodizing off (or a lot of it) and make it a little easier to sand since the original anodized surface is typically much harder to sand than an untreated aluminum surface. The part will be dull and greyish after the Easy Off treatment but may still have a little anodizing left in it. Still, it seems to help ease the process a little bit.

Don't get near those trim pieces with big stand mounted buffer type setup.

My442

I had mine professionaly polished...came out great.

507OLDS

I have very few trims,I think 2 each,that are like NOS,with all the annodizing,and no scratches.Do you know how many consoles I've had to get these? Too many. There's a lot of things that can come in contact with those in 40 years.Keys around the lock,seat belt buckles,or whatever.Then there is your typical parts-car or swap meet console,that's been tossed around,and those usually look pretty hideous.
The hardest part for me to find for the console,is the vinyl-covered metal surround,for the upper section.The vinyl almost always has some sort of flaw in it,like scratches,nicks,or whatever.Then they are usually dented or someone drilled through the side to refasten their broken hinge.
I took one before,used a heat gun,and stripped all of the vinyl off,then had the metal section chromed.Different,but just not my cup of tea.You could send those to some place like Just Dashes,and have them re-vinyled,but I do not know how they would look,compared to original.I have also noticed that different years had more defined grain than others.They made some subtle changes in those consoles from 70-72.I have also noticed that they used different types for harware,depending on what plant the car was built.