Anybody have any aluminum trim repaired and replated? I just removed the rocker moulding from my 67 vista and it needs alot of work to repair. Also have alot of other aluminum trim that has a milky look to it. Any suggestions would be helpful. Tony
The milky look can be one of two things: If its powdery, it is oxiding. It needs to be dipped to clean off any coatings and anodizing. Buffing can be done DIY (yourself), but you'll need to recoat it with an epoxy or powdercoat clear finish. If it's just opaque, its the clearcoat that needs stripping (paint stripper will do) and refinished with either epoxy or powdercoat. If they're short enough, you beg the wife to go shopping or visit her mother for 24 hours and use the oven for powdercoating.
Once its stripped should it be sanded to remove scratches and polished then clear coated. I can't powdercoat because some of the parts are over 5 ft.
If it is scratched, use a Dremel or similar with what's called Jeweller's Rouge, and smooth them out. It's used for jewllery, optic glass, etc. If you go to a Jeweller, or an older Hardware store, you can get a bar of it for a lot less than the pre-packed Dremel accessory kit. If you've got a fixed grinder, you just switch to a polishing wheel, sprinkle a few drops of water and hold the Jeweller's Rouge bar against it, then polish away. If the trim is thin, hold a block of wood on the backside to prevent it from kinking.
I'm dealing with similar issues on the side trim of my 67 Dodge Coronet 500 2 door hardtop. The wide body side molding is anodized aluminum. The anodizing has turned a cloudy milky white. It will not polish without removing the anodizing. After using a buffing wheel to remove the anodizing on the same trim for my convertible, I didn't want to go that long painful route with the hardtop's trim. By the way, if you are using a buffing wheel, or if you're manually removing the anodizing with fine sandpaper or fine steel wool or even a scotchbrite pad, you'll get to a point when the trim starts to turn black. Thats a good thing. Thats the annodizing reacting to your efforts eventually you will get past the blackening stage and get to the bare aluminum. The bare aluminum can of course be polished to a shine, then if the car is garaged, just keeping the trim waxed should maintain a shine. This time I went a different route. I wanted to try chemicals for removing the anodizing to save time. I had realized that manually removing the annodizing could take a month of evenings and weekends for the amount of trim I had. I tried the Easy Off oven cleaner method, but that didn't work. Later someone told me that an EPA mandated change in the formula made it less effective. Then someone on the Coronet Registry suggested Blue Lightning Anodize Remover in a spray pump bottle. It doesn't work quite as easilly as the instructions say, but its a whole lot better than the manual method. Basically you remove the trim from the car. spray the stuff on and let it foam up for about 10- 15 minutes, then spray it again to keep it wet and foaming for another 15 minutes. At this point the manufacturer says you can take a wet paper towel and wipe it off and the water neutralizes the chemical (totally safe). But they also said if it doesn't work completely to reapply. My first attempt resulted in some splotchy appearance as some annodizing was left behind. So my solution was to apply third and forth coatings before wiping off the first and second coatings, waiting 10 minutes between applications, and then, as the bottle instructed, after the fourth and last coating of annodize remover has foamed but not dried, I took a scotchbrite pad to the trim. The chemical loosened the anodizing so that when I briefly rubbed the trim with the scotchbrite pad, the foam turned black as the anodizing was removed. Then I wiped it off with a wet paper towel and ran it under the hose. The instructions call for using the Blue Lightning metal polish at this point to bring out a shine and to apply a protective coating. I have the polish but have not yet used it. But, on some of the trim I have used Nevr-Dull (available in the automotive dept at Wal-Mart and auto parts stores). Once I wiped the trim down with the Nevr-Dull and buffed off the Never-Dull with a paper towel, I found I have the finish I was looking for. Its not a mirror finish, and I don't know yet if using the Blue Lightning polish will make it a mirror finish or not, but it looks good, and I don't think its supposed to be a mirror finish anyway. Since the blue lightning polish says it leaves a protective coating on the trim, and since I need to repaint some parts of the trim that should be painted black and or argent, I have decided to wait till I've painted the trim before putting on something that will leave a protective coating. Bottom line is that I removed annodizing from a boatload of trim in one afternoon that it would have taken me forever to do manually. For my trim I purchased two small spray bottles and one small jar of polish. I used most of both bottles of Anodize Remover for the side trim and the grill surround molding. www.bluelightningproducts.com
