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After fifteen years of waiting, I've got the old gal into the body shop to get her straightened out and painted. Not doing a full restoration, but I am getting the outside and interior in order. Turned out I was driving a Bondomobile and didn't even realize it. The bottom of my right quarter panel was completely removed before I bought it and it was replaced with about an inch of Bondo. The bottom of the right fender was rusted out and filled in with Bondo, too, but I've gotten that patched up. They don't polish trim at the body shop I've taken my car to. Should I try polishing the trim myself, or should I get it professionally done? It's got overspray on it because whoever painted the car last didn't remove the trim first, and it's got quite a few scratches. Looks like someone went to it with steel wool.
The right fender that I had bashed in on a sign post was replaced with a donor from a Vista Cruiser. I'm getting the bottom repainted to the original metallic Aquamarine color, and I'm getting the top repainted white (it was Tahoe Turquoise from the factory but painted white by the previous owner).
...Should I try polishing the trim myself, or should I get it professionally done? ...Looks like someone went to it with steel wool.
If you are a careful-type person, you can polish stainless perfectly with a buffing kit from someone like Eastwood. The steel wool scratches will come out easily. The watch-outs are to wear proper safety gear (leather gloves, eye protection, etc.), hold the piece so that if it gets caught it won't wrap your fingers in it, and never stand in line with the wheel because if a piece catches it will launch somewhere. You don't want it launching into you. Removing dents is more difficult.
You can polish aluminum but it won't stay bright unless it is anodized. It is getting very difficult to find good polishers/anodizers.
The Eastwood polishing kits work pretty well. I had a air powered die grinder and could control the RPM, and a plastic jawed hobby vice so I had an advantage. Watch the RPM and follow the advice above. Paint can come off with lacquer thinner.
That applies to stainless trim. If any is aluminum, like said above you will remove the anodizing.
I'm a little disappointed that I had to go to a different body shop, but I got a rough estimate of $200 to polish all of my trim, so I think I might go that route. I wanted to get it done in time for them to put it back on before I get the car back, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen now.
So, my polishing guy just kept my trim for a month then gave it back to me without doing anything, so I ended up having to polish it myself. I bought a bench buffer and stand from Harbor Freight for about $80, and a sisal wheel, a cloth wheel, black compound, and green compound from Amazon and got to work on it. Took about 15-20 hours to get all the stainless done. I didn't get a professional result, and I bent a couple of things on accident, but everything ended up looking a lot better than it did. Here's the grille bar half done.
Found out the hard way that half of the trim is anodized aluminum, so I'm going to have to get some brown and red compound and some new buffer wheels, polish off the old paint (because the lazy piece of crap who painted the car last didn't remove the trim when painting it), drive two hours, drop my trim off at the anodizer to get it stripped, drive home two hours, drive two hours to pick it up, give it a final polish, drive two hours back to the anodizer to drop it off to get it anodized, drive two hours home, drive two hours to pick up the finished trim, then drive two hours home.
As for the car, the car got rained on at the body shop while the paint was drying, so the paint got ruined. The paint guy has to sand it and repaint it, so that's going to be another couple weeks. Here's some photos of the hood trunk and fenders.
I got it repainted the original aquamarine. The color is a lot lighter than I thought it'd be. I've re-checked and it matches the paint chips I've seen online, but it doesn't seem to match the color of other '67 Oldsmobiles people are calling aquamarine. What's up with that?
Maybe they look different because of the different displays I'm looking at the photos on, or maybe it's just a trick of the mind. I guess I'll just have to wait for the car to be finished to pass judgment on the color.
I'm looking at the pics I took when the car was primed and the color does match the color that was under the trim, so I guess it's the right color. I don't know why I thought it'd be darker. Maybe it's because colors are darker on my phone and I was looking at pictures of other cars on my phone.
Stripped all the paint from the aluminum stuff and dropped it off to be stripped yesterday. I'm also getting the place that has my car to replace the engine wiring harnesses. They say the car will be done this week. Will have to get at dyeing the dashboard this week, too.
Painted in the letters on the trunk molding today. Will need some more work getting it clean, but I think did a pretty good job for a first try.
Also cleaned up my dash pad and painted it. Before painting and after the SEM soap and Vinyl Prep:
First coat:
Color doesn't really match, but it's as close as I could come. It's SEM marine turquoise. Ran out and will have to wait a couple days for another can to arrive for the next coat.
Got my new carpet a couple of weeks ago and just took it out of the box today. I'm taking the opportunity to change the carpet color from dark green to dark teal, which I feel better matches the turquoise interior.
Thanks for the words of encouragement. The dash looks a lot better after a second and third coat.
Since I was already at it, I decided to paint my new speaker shelf. Didn't get it quite perfect before I ran out, but not worth buying another can. This stuff is expensive.
No shame in throwing money at something that won't pan out as far as money invested! I personally can think of several things my life that I threw money at and was not worth it in the end, like my ex-wife!
Almost none of the trim was put back on. And they didn't drill the holes for the fender script on the replacement fender. And the driver's door doesn't shut correctly and has to be slammed and the hood latch sticks. The hood doesn't sit flush with the fenders: 20180828_101259.jpg 20180828_101313.jpg 20180828_101609.jpg
And they lost some of the parts I brought to them to install when they were putting the car back together. But here's the real kicker: while I was putting the quarter panel trim back on, I found that the left trim fit quite nice and square: 20180828_183122.jpg
I thought it might have been a problem with the trim, so I compared it to the trim on the opposite side, and they're mirror opposites. If only it were the trim. No, I measured the bottoms of both quarter panels, and the right one is almost an inch shorter than the left. Remember all that Bondo I talked about in the first post? This is what it was hiding. The bottom of the quarter panel was crumpled in an impact then smoothed over with Bondo. The body guy said he didn't want to take the Bondo out because he didn't know what was underneath there. I guess I should have had him replace it with a repro panel before one of the two times he painted it.
I forgot to add: the rear window still leaks and there are still holes where they welded the rust holes, which defeats the primary reason I brought the car to them. I still can't drive it.
So I finally got all the trim back on, and I paid a different body shop to fix the front and rear windows. She's looking a lot better now. Installed the instrument panel yesterday. Will upload photos of that once I get it better assembled. The front bumper is in the rechrome shop and will be done in 3-4 mos. I will be removing the rear bumper today.
