boby side moulding

[ronthet]

Ok, 1968 Chevy CST, LWB, 3 on the tree. I have all my moulding off and need to clean it up to shine. Is this stainless, chrome or what. I have some stuff I used on my chrome bumper I got at Pep Boys in a silver can. Looks like cotton and you just peel it out and rub it on then buff. It worked pretty good on chrome, but not so good on my moulding. A new paint job soon, so I need to restore my moulding, or weld up everything and forget the moulding.

Also including all the chevy bowtie etc. Any suggestion on what to use for cleaning and geeting a shine back????

[68w/sbc406]

arnt the side moldings aluminum? try some polish, i have used stuff called hollywoods with good results on wheels, but couldnt tell you bout side moldings, i dont have any

[Terry Peerson]

The Body Side Mouldings are Anodized Aluminum. Regular type polishing really won't do much for it. To do it right, you will have to remove the anodizing. EZ-OFF oven cleaner will do it. Then you can either polish it either by hand or with a buffing wheel. After that, you can either a) Have the piece re-anodized, b) Shoot some kind of Clear-Coating on it, or c) re-polish whenever it seems to be getting dull. You can perform the anodizing process yourself, but it involves some very dangerous chemicals and electricity. If you do attempt to "home-anodize", take every precaution seriously and ABSOLUTELY wear chemical-resistant goggles!

BTW: One thing that interests me is the fact that you can also "Color-Anodize". Simply by adding certain dyes to the anodizing solution, you can protect your aluminum parts in custom colors. Some even look kind of like chrome.

TP

[ronthet]

thanks, I am not familiar wit Anodizing so I guess I need to investigate.

[8door]

[QUOTE=Terry Peerson] If you do attempt to "home-anodize", take every precaution seriously and ABSOLUTELY wear chemical-resistant goggles!

How you do that?I sthere a kit like powder coating?

[Terry Peerson]

The first place that I would investigate would be Eastwood. I know they have home powdercoating kits available. They might also have anodizing, kits too. If you do a "GOOGLE" search for Aluminum Anodizing, you will find several sites that offer some instructions for home anodizing. It looks like a fairly simple process. But, it does involve some very toxic and dangerous chemicals along with running electricity to the solution. I'm pretty sure that you have to: 1. Remove all current anodizing from the piece. 2. Polish part to "Mirror-Like" finish. 3. Prepare Caustic solution tank. 4. Immerse part into solution. 5. Soak part in solution (I can't remember how long). Apparently, the anodizing solution has to have electricity to work. If I understand this correctly, the process causes the aluminum to form an extremely durable coating that is actually a thin layer of corrosion. This layer is very resistant to scratching (within reason) and further corrosion (which is the dry, white powdery stuff that forms on aluminum). I haven't tried this yet, myself. But it looks like a cool way to restore those aluminum parts that are not easy to find. Aluminum that is left un-anodized will begin to corrode immediately (it's similar to bare-steel rusting). You could just leave the part un-anodized after polishing, but you would have to periodically re-polish the part to remove the corrosion that has formed. Painting a clear paint coating will work...for awhile too.

T