Time for a small update on what I worked on this week. Like a lot of times, I was just bored so I grabbed something and started working on it.

The door panel woodgrain was in OK shape but the corners were starting to curl. I've had new woodgrain for years but never got around to installing it. The new woodgrain was from Year One.


The original woodgrain was darker but it could have darkened up over the years. The new woodgrain matches the color of the dash so I'm happy with it.


I read online that WD-40 works good at removing the old woodgrain so I saturated one piece with it. I checked it after about 15 minutes and nothing was happening. I got online and did another search. I read where someone used paint stripper with good results. So, I got out the paint stripper and after about 15 minutes, had a look at the decal. It had started to loosen up but it wasn't working very fast. That's when I had an idea.

I bought the wife one of those Shark hand held steem cleaners. I dug it out of the closet, added water and plugged it in. The woodgrain decals peeled right off with very little glue left behind. I couldn't believe how great it worked. For the small spots of glue left on the bezels, I used Un-Du.(Scrapper's Solution) It's for removing stickers and tape from scrapbooking projects. It took the glue right off.

The bezels were in pretty good shape. One of them didn't need any work. The black paint around the edge was still like new. The other side had a few little areas where the paint was scratched. On that bezel, I just misted some SEM Trim Black onto it and wiped the access off the chrome sections. After attaching the new woodgrain decals I turned my attention to the Fratzog emblems. To remove them from the bezels I just used my angle grinder with a flap disc to grind down the pins in the back. I still had a good amount of the pins left for reattachment. I ended up used a very small amount of clear silicone to reattach the emblems. I just put a small amount on a screwdriver and put a daub around each pin. Once the emblems were pushed into place, some silicone pushed out the sides which I figured would happen. I let the silicone dry completely...it would have just smeared if I had tried to clean it up while it was wet. Once it was dry I took a new razor blade and trimmed the excess off the edges. It worked perfectly.