I will start from the beginning.

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I drilled out all of the rivets and carefully took it all apart. I used a buffing wheel that was on sale at Harbor Fright ($40.00) and polished the outer lip and the inner lip. When I was done I masked those two areas off and was ready to paint.

Did the same to the egg crate frame... The egg crate was lightly fogged with Eastwood Reflective paint, the stuff you use inside turn signal housings. If you use too much paint it looks painted and that is not the look I was going for. I wanted something that was a little inconsistent and to give a more original look.

I put it all back together and this is what I ended up with. I was into it for $80.00 including a new buffing wheel. There are people out there that want $1250.00 to restore a grill....there grills look better that mime but I don't think they look $1170.00 better that mine.

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Troy, Nice work. Looks Beautiful to me.

Dave, To you also.

This is a great thread and hope it gets saved somewhere. I may use a combination of what both you guys have done. Thanks for sharing.

Troy, I had thought about getting a buffing wheel but didn't think about HF. I'll give them a look when I get out that way again.

Thanks again. This has been helpful.

Joe

Very nice job to both Troy and Dave!.

A couple of questions:

Dave, Where in Canada did you buy that Aluminum cleaner?

Troy, What buffing wheel did you use, and did you need to use any compound? Also, what rivets did you use to reassemble the grill?

Excellant info...I have saved this thread

Can we archive this.??

Thanks for the nice words.

The buffing wheel that I got from Harbor Freight came with a flapper wheel for soft or finishing compounds and a standard wheel for hard or cutting compounds.

SOMTHING I FORGOT TO MENTION that is VERY important before you start to polish the grills or other parts. Many of these parts have a silver anodizing on them. That must be removed before you can polish the parts. I used Easy Off oven cleaner and a 00 steel wool. It will take two or three times to get the anodizing off but you have to do it before you polish it. You can tell when the anodizing is off when the steel wool starts to grab onto the part. When the anodizing is still there the steel wool kinda slides over it, making it feel very smooth.

See attached for the name and number of the place I got the cleaner. The rivets and most importantly the tool were provided by mopart member Petes resto parts. Here is a link
http://www.petesresto.com/

Thank you.

If you are going to all the trouble of taking the eggcrate apart, you may as well replace it with a new piece. The picture I posted above has a new eggcrate in it.

BeepBeep, are you saying that the egg crate is available new/repop? Who? Price? Just curious. Thanks, Joe

Next time you are in an elevator..... look up...and use your imagination!!!

Steve and I tried using the "new egg crate" The gauge is much lighter than original and bends very easliy when being handled. The finish is perfect.

Thanks to HemiRT Dave for re-finding this topic link for me. Also, thanks to Troy for his input.

I thought I would share what I have been able to do so far. I took the grille apart as Troy had done. Yesterday and today I worked on the egg crate portion and the Challenger emblem. Since I had reflective paint, I decided to follow Troy's advice and did what he had done. I also restored the Challenger emblem.

The grille surround I have is in pretty good shape. I'm going to experiment with some aluminum as Troy recommended to me to see how it will look and then decide what direction to go. Thanks to everyone who posted on this before and the PMs I have gotten.

Joe