Here is a series of pictures centered around the grills.
The original buckets were so rusted I had to replace them. I got a nice pair from WCCC for very little money. Here they are after sandblasting, primed/painted and reassembly. I bought a restored pair of vacuum actuators a while back so all I had to do was install them. The vacuum actuators pivot a little bit, so I lubricated the mounting bolt. In fact all pivot points were lubricated.
eg. like the headlight door bolts, seen here lubricated with lithium grease.
The chrome pieces were removed from the grills and the frames were bead blasted, and painted.
The chrome pieces cleaned up really well. it was just a matter of masking and painting the black and the silver on the sides. For the silver I used Krylon Metallic Aluminum (K02773007) which is a perfect match to the original color. I used a trick that was mentioned on this forum. After spraying the silver I removed the blue tape when the paint was still wet so that there would be no sharp edges to take down after the paint dried.
As learned in a previous posting, there were 3 different head light door hinges, which only differ by where the center mounting point is located. These changes had to do with cracking issues with the doors. My car had the early 68 version for some reason, but they were not usable due to the rusted out nuts for the stoppers, so I ended up buying a used set of the 68 version.
Here is the back side of the completed right headlight door. The grills are screwed in place at the top and bottom. Originally the centers were held in place with pins that were mushroomed over, which had to be ground away to take the grill off. To put it together I put drops of clear epoxy adhesive to make the connection.
