Getting ready for the electric motor upgrade, but my grille is a disaster and missing at least one of the bushings to keep the doors aligned, so I pulled the entire assembly yesterday. The black painted surfaces have blistered quite a bit, and I assume a light pass with my Dremel to smooth them out should be sufficient before painting? If you look at the outboard curved side of the bucket, you will see what I’m seeing.
What causes this, and short of keeping a good coat of SEM Trim Black on it, is there something else that needs to be done to protect it?
It looks like you are missing the flat piece of metal that goes on the backside of the curved section of the outer grille. It serves as a block off plate and you should not be able to see through the grille bars on that section.
Randy Goodling
CCOA #95
All of the used grilles I’ve had look like that. Not sure what to do about it either. If the grille gets rechromed they show even more.
The problem exists because Ford made parts from pot metal. Taillights, rear extension trim, parking light bezels, and headlight covers all have this issue in some form or another. Rechroming is extremely expensive and results can vary depending on who does them. The only solution for ones damaged as badly as yours are is to sandblast them to remove the bad metal and rough up the chrome to accept paint, two part epoxy prime and paint them completely. Basically a black out. I would highly suggest you try to find a better set if you plan to keep the stock look. Just my .02
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Thanks for the catch, I hadn’t noticed and should have! The driver’s fender is definitely not original and the driver side door fitment is a topic of several other threads that I’ve yet to fully sort, but she was hit or hit something hard and took out front to c-pillar at some point in her life. I just inspected the passenger side grille bucket and it looks very good by comparison, so this is probably a junk yard special bit. Mrs. Knight717 is going to be thrilled when I bring up yet another purchase…
The headlight door on this side is OK short of sanding and painting, and the passenger side is good, so I think I can get by with just replacing the driver side bucket.It has a broken spring mount that I bought a kit to fix from WCCC, so there’s another reason to go ahead and replace it.
Or $35 that the Mrs probably won’t notice!
What is the best way to reattach the plate?
It’s the a the impurities in the pot metal that cause the pitting. Nature of the beast…
If you have it, Panel bond adhesive 3M. Works for filling pin holes, sands easily. Lots of hours ahead.
Soda blasting the grill pcs will remove the black paint and some of the residue from the corrosion of the pot metal but not harm the chrome . I did that on our 67 grills 16 yrs ago . You might research LOW temp powder coat. If the guy doesnt know about it move on. Std temp p coat will distort your grill during baking . You can overcome that by making angle iron frames to support the large grill pcs. But that takes time and $$$.
If you find someone who deals in low temp p coat , hang them upside down, spray all over semigloss black , then wipe each fin with your finger ,letting the powder fall to the floor…then bake…no hard mask line where the black meets the chrome.
Worked for me with lots of learning along the way.
Getting the pits and lands cleaned up are covered, but I’m still wondering what is the best way to reattach the backing plates for the curved sections of the headlight buckets once they are restored?
To reattach the curved piece of metal you could use your favorite brand of epoxy or something like JB Weld. Or you could drill and tap the remaining piece of stud and then use a screw to attach the plate.
Randy Goodling
CCOA #95
JB has a “metal” epoxy - repaired a couple cracks on center grille and re-attached the back plate on my RH corner backing plate - 3-4 light coats of SEM trim black and wiped the chrome with some lacquer thinner - came out pretty good -
Thank you. I used it to fix a center cap that had issues and it is still holding, so it should be perfect for this.
