Polishing Wood Trim

So I've been wanting to polish the molding around the wood trim for awhile. A guy on longroof does it but he is busy with other orders til WagFest so I wanted to try my hand at it. I got a wire wheel from walmart and stated blasting away. It took it down to bare metal without many scratches, I then touched it up with 220 grit paper and even without polish it doesn't look half bad to me at least. If it comes out good I'll make a how to if anyone is interested.

Wow, that's metal? I always thought it was made of plastic. I'd like to see pics when you're done!

Matt Trakker wrote:

Wow, that's metal? I always thought it was made of plastic. I'd like to see pics when you're done!

Yup, under all that laminate is bare aluminum (?). Here are a couple so far:

Before:


17 years of crap:


After stripping, no polish yet (used too much wirewheel, might replace this piece)


15 mins of soaking in Aircraft Stripper:


After, no polish, piece by the mirror was polished thou for comparison:

Hmmm... And I was gonna say "Pledge."

toomanytoyz wrote:

Hmmm... And I was gonna say "Pledge."

LOL. My friends say that all the time, as a joke they got me a "carwarming" gift of car cleaners including a can of Pledge . One of them thought it was actual wood....

Finally got around to stripping the rest of the trim. A buddy and I got it all snapped back on last night. Heres the left front quarter. Still need to finish buffing it out:

Cadet;

It looks good. I'm doing the exact to my 1994RMW White woodie. Used Klean Cut & Rustoleum brand spray strippers. a real PITA. What did you soak your mldgs in? A metal vat of some sort?
Also I broke 2 of the gray plastic clips that hold my right front aluminum mouldng spear on. The ones that snap into the wh plastic grommets. Looks like you broke some? Did you use 3m double sided tape? Thanks in advance!

Thanks.

I used the spray on Rustoleum Aircraft stripper. Two cans was enough for the whole car, each piece takes 2-4 coats of spray. I then buffed them quickly with my dremel. I then polished them with Mothers Mag and Aluminum polish. I'll post some pictures when the whole car is done getting polished. The pictures here are just when the trim was stripped. I only broke like 2 clips so I left the missing spaces towards the middle of the pieces and used 3M trim and moulding adhesive but it did not stick well so I am going to try something else.

Finally got all the trim back on and polished up. It still needs some more work to get the shine to really pop. But its a lot better than it was.

time for a set of new (matching) lug nuts

96Brougham wrote:

time for a set of new (matching) lug nuts

Yup, said that the moment I put them on. Found a good deal, set of 24 for $16.99 on ebay.