The first question should be- what are your expectations? Before offering solutions, the expectations of the owner need to be understood. I&#;ll guess the body shop guy either did not want the work or figured if he couldn&#;t restore it to like new, it wasn&#;t worth doing because; he has super high standards or he perceived that you do.
That being said, it&#;s a 12 year old truck. If it looked decent from 5 ft away, would that be sufficient? How about 10? You get the idea&#;
If you&#;re OK with a 5footer or more, then I think you can do as good a job as necessary with some rattle cans of paint. You can get the OEM color or go with some off the shelf stuff. I&#;ve painted lots of grills from my daily drivers to restoration stuff using rattle cans and no one was the wiser.
What do you have to loose? $20 and a little time?
My first advice is to remove the grille. It&#;s actually super easy on those Chevys. Clean it with a toothbrush and some detergent and let it dry for at least a day. Then prime and paint. Several light coats are always better than a heavy one especially on grilles with all the facets and corners. Snap it back in and count your savings!
If you would prefer the OEM look and quality, then go to a different body shop for a second opinion. You&#;ll also save a bunch if you just bring in the part so they don&#;t have to do that labor. A good shop will strip it and repaint. That&#;s nonsense about sanding, fading etc. Only a masochist would sand something like that. They&#;ll media blast it and then shoot the paint. It won&#;t fade any faster than the original one did. Besides fading is the probably the least of your concerns when directly subjected to road debris&#;
Re: Restoring plastic grilles, what kind of prep?
Re: hotairballoonpilot] #
04:35 PM
Link to Shuangcheng New Material
04:35 PM
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ScottSmith_HarmsMr Wizzard
Mr WizzardJoined:Posts: 42,714
Most Muscle Car era Mopar grills are made of ABS plastic which is a fairly solvent friendly material (meaning that glues, paints, etc. will bond to it) accordingly many glues work to make repairs, however not all of them share the same amount of flexibility as the base ABS material, you'll either get a softer or harder bond area which can lead to new cracks adjacent to the repair seem. This is why the melted ABS works very well to repair most cracks in an ABS part, you'll end up with a part that has even hardness across the repair area. I also use plastic welding for some repairs, it has it's place in performing grill repairs but you need to be cautious in overheating the base material, each time plastic is heated to the melting point it will lose some of it's plasticizer content due to heat degredation which can make it brittle in the repair areas. If you experiment with some junk plastic first you can see the results before you mistakingly ruin a good grill. The ABS mix posted above is a "readers digest version" I can post a more complete version later if you like.As a final note, gluing/repairing the cracks is just the beginning in restoring plastic, the real work is in the final sanding and finishing.Good luck!
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