Refinished woodgrain on '94 Roadmaster Estate Wagon

Refinished woodgrain trim on '94 Roadmaster Estate Wagon

Having read through Norm's sticky and followed the details over at rickwrench I figured this looked like a fun project. Since this is a long weekend for us Canucks I figured now was a good time.

I followed everything I had read pretty much to a tee. I went to Home Depot and bought two cans of custom coloured Tremclad (Rustoleum) in #501-Almond and #511-Toffee. I did the car one side at a time to avoid confusion and pulled all of the trim off to get it prepped. After washing the trim with soap and water I peeled off the woodgrain label wherever possible. Several of my trim pieces were still in excellent shape and were difficult to peel. In those cases, I went at them with some 80 grit sandpaper and that took it right off. I cleaned the pieces again and went over them with a 400 grit paper to smooth them out before painting.

I found a brush kicking around my shop that was pretty old. It was perfect for putting on the Almond base coat and I lightly brushed the paint onto the trim leaving brush strokes in the paint wherever possible and left all of the pieces to try. As the coats were so light, it didn't take long to dry at all. Once it was dry I snagged an old terry washcloth to put the Toffee colour over top. I wrapped the cloth around my finger and dipped it into the paint. It took a little trial and error with the cloth before I was comfortable with it but I found that wiping the paint on with my finger and then lightly spreading it with an unused portion of the cloth worked quite well. After all of those were done and dried I sprayed a clear coat over top of them before reinstalling.

Over all, I'm really pleased with the results.

 

Darn fine work there, good job, looks great.

 

Looks Good

 

I just bought a 96 last week, and it looks like I'll be doing the same thing with it's trim..

 

Looks like brand new!

 

Isn't it amazing how much nicer a car can look when the pictures are just a little bit smaller. :,)

 

What's up with the Olds hubcaps on blackwalls in the closer shots and the Raodie alloys with whitewalls in the other shots?

 

Ya caught me! Right after I finished the trim installation I pulled off the snows with the Olds wheel discs. It's the last year for those snows and, since I don't plan on letting the Roadie see snow again, I was in no hurry to change them. Hence the late May changeover. Once I had the summers on I had to take more shots with the whitewalls but my best close-up shots were prior to the wheel swap.

 

Makes sense. Also, how do you remove and put back the trim without messing it up? It looks like you got it back on nice and tight.

 

Very nice work!

That trim peels on ALL these cars, terrible design.

When I got mine, I sanded all the trim and painted it a darker color called Nutmeg. Since then I've seen people polish these to look nearly like chrome, and also paint them the way you did.

If I ever get a wild hair to work on mine again I'm going to try doing it the way you did yours. Look great!

You live and learn.

Mine here:

 

It's actually surprisingly easy. The trim on the door panels and the tailgate have screws/nuts on them. The trim piece out at the nose has some trim posts that insert into bushings in the metal. Everything else is held on with plain ol trim clips.

I levered the trim out ever so slightly with a trim removal tool. I wrapped it in a soft cloth and slid it behind the trim until I got to a clip. Each clip has little spring tabs on each side. While pulling the trim out from the body a little bit, I pushed down on the spring tab with a small screwdriver and they popped right off. Putting them back on was just a matter of snapping them in place.




This is the trim piece that came off of the front fender. it's held on with trim posts that insert into the fender.

 

Hmmm...anyone else had any luck resizing images while creating a post? After I insert the image, the editor allows me to drag the corners to make it a more reasonable viewing size but as soon as I submit the post, the image goes back to whatever the original size of the picture was.

 

nice work CW

 

I'm not much good with a puter, wiz, but here is a post by Wagonmaster that explains pic posting in the forum....

http://www.stationwagonforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=307

Hope this helps. More for me than for you. Hard to view those bill boards!

 

Great Looking Wood Grain!
Amazing what a little ingenuity and trial and error can do!
And to think I could have save a lot of money!
I hope mine turns out to look that great when finished!

I am having trouble with the pixs resizing also!