Anybody have some experience restoring our exterior "chrome" trim? I was doing some experimenting with the classic steel wool method, and mine seamed to be plated.
The trim around the windows and the wheelwell trim is either aluminum or stainless steel. I've been sanding and polishing mine for the past month and I'm still not quite sure what it is.
But I'm pretty sure it's aluminum because on the roofrail trim ( and many other trim pieces ) you will notice it comes to a peak in the center of the trim. Mine now has a less sharp peak, it's got a rounded edge. I don't think you can do that to stainless with wet-sand paper.
Your's may have been plated at some point in time.
If it's not plated, and if it's really dull and stained, you start wet-sanding with a 400 grit sandpaper and work up to a 2000 grit. And then polish till your blue in the face.
I don't know if I'm doing it right, or if it should take this long but the results are very nice, has a mirror finish to it.
I took all the trim in the house. I wet-sand it in the bathtub, ( hint, if you do this, lay a big trash bag in the tub to prevent scratching it and to keep all the sanding crud off the tub, less clean-up time. I got a cool GF, me and Lu have been doing this whole resto together ) And then we've been polishing while watching tv and such.
I've heard from several people that the exterior trim is anodized aluminum. So even if you get it polished up nice, it will require re-anodizing or clear coating to keep it shiny.
I wonder if the "Zoop-seal" stuff I've seen in street rodder magazines would help. They claim to maintain a polished surface for 1 year after coating, but its pretty pricey stuff.
I've heard from several people that the exterior trim is anodized aluminum. So even if you get it polished up nice, it will require re-anodizing or clear coating to keep it shiny.
That is probably the worst news I have ever heard. After working this hard on it, I hate to think that I have to keep doing this over and over.
Does anyone know how you go about re-anodizing aluminum? Or any downsides to clearcoating aluminum?
I wonder if the "Zoop-seal" stuff I've seen in street rodder magazines would help. They claim to maintain a polished surface for 1 year after coating, but its pretty pricey stuff.
You can tell that at least mine was coated. When I started before with some 400 grit, you can see the strata. I figured that it would be the same as older style trim, for which that process works well. My trim really shows its' age. Maybe a product like POR-15's "Glisten PC" would work for the trim like it does dor wheels. Just a thoiught.
I did a search for Zoop seal and found many positive comments.
This thread at clubcobra.com talks positively about it. http://www.clubcobra.com/t50554.html
I've seen aluminum professionally clear coated before with one of the top end auto finishes, and it had to be treated first...which left a multi-colored hue to it.
I wonder about clear power coating. Eastwood has some of that also.
You might contact someone that does professional trim polishing.
i can say that i use "Never-dull" in that silver can in autozone and that works just fine but stays bright for a week or two. i like the outcome. i tried fine grit sandpaper when i first got the car. needless to say, the coating was stripped clean, got rid of that one and bought another to replace.
I tried never-dull also before I started sanding and it worked well on some of the pieces that wer'nt that bad. But like my roof rail trim, it was almost black, a very, very dark grey when I started, and never-dull did'nt do anything for that. And then once I got the roof rail pieces done it shined so much more brighter than the pieces I used never dull on I had to go ahead and sand them also to make them match.