I’m helping a friend resurrect his 69 hardtop and i’m fretting over the state of the chrome. The grill is heavily pitted and the eyebrow and hood strips are pretty dinged too. The tail light chrome is also very pitted. There’s no money in the budget to pay for straightening and rechroming. i could straighten the chrome strips if i could use bondo or lead myself, but not the chroming. Has anyone tried painting the grill and front chrome say… black and white or another contrasting color combo and have it look good?
It’s been done before. Eliminator Cougars had black paint grilles as well as GT-E’s. Here is a picture of a Leon’s 1970 Cougar with body color bumpers.
Also Kyle’s 1967 Cougar
Steven
Great, this gives me more options to think about. I also wonder if anyone has used white instead of black on the grill before…
I had the bumpers stripped (electro stripped) & then painted on the “RestoMod” over 20 years ago. All the trim including the grill was palsticoated. It is similar to powder coating using lower heat. The pot-metal grill was the difficult one. Temps are close to melting.
Anyway here’s another example to look at
Don’t paint over the chrome directly. Paint doesn’t stick to chrome. Take your parts to your local chrome shop, and have the chrome stripped off, leaving the bare metal underneath. They should not charge you much to do that. Then your paint will stick nearly forever…