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Old 07-10-2022, 05:19 PM
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roger1 roger1 is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: San Angelo, TX
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Here's how I went about painting the grilles:
First thing I did was paint the grilles all over with black SPI epoxy. I then lightly scuffed it all except the egg crate centers. I then taped off the parts that remain black before spraying the Argent Silver base coat. Taping the center parts are difficult and time consuming.





This is the same Motobase base coat that I used for the wheels.



After some dry time, I removed the tape and sprayed the entire grilles with SPI Universal Clear.





My original headlight bezel chrome isn't perfect but isn't all that bad either. So I decided to clean them up, repaint the black and then get them installed before deciding if I needed to explore getting others.

First thing I did was tape the chrome edges off and blast the areas to be painted. black. There were a few pits in the bottom part of the inside areas that I filled with JB Weld and then sanded smooth.



Taping the bezel chrome is a real pain to do and again takes a lot of patience and time. I decided the only way to do it was to tape and paint the inside part, let that cure well and then tape off the inside part to paint the perimeters.



Again, used SPI black epoxy primer. I wanted these to remain a semi-gloss so did not spray any clear.





Since my original horns didn't work, I decided to go aftermarket and bought a pair of Hella universal trumpet horns. They are nice and small and were easy to mount and take up less room than originals. They are plastic but sound fine to me and are very loud.





After getting those installed, I was then ready to install the marker lights, parking lights, grilles, headlights, headlight bezels, valance moldings and the header filler panel under the hood. I had to do some adjusting on both the grillles and the headlight backing plates to get them all adjusted to my satisfaction. Several hours over the last 3 days getting it all installed.













I bought a new set of Wagner headlights from Rock Auto but one of them was broken when they arrived. A replacement is on the way, so for now I installed one of the old Sylvania ones that came on the car.

I'm extremely pleased with how well I was able to get the grilles and headlight bezels to line up and match where they meet. I also am pleased with how the paint came out on the grilles. Black centers look a lot better to me especially on a red car. I think the chrome edges on the headlight bezels will be fine. You have to get pretty close to see the imperfections

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