Stainless steel trim restoration

Hey, i tried to sand and polish my windshield mouldings, rear glass mouldings, trunk lid moulding and upper door trims. Now i hate stainless steel.
I spend hours sanding (240-400-600-800-1000-1200-1500-2000) and polishing with 4 different mop and compound. Great mirror polish but a lot of scratches in sunlight. I am so frustrated that i am going to order restored ones. Any experience with them? I think it is a worth of money if they really are show car quality. Does anyone have pictures? Thanks. There is some pictures.





I found that just good stainless command sticks and buffer wheel achieved very good results on my car. I did not have pitting or heavy scratches to work with however. I also was not going for a mirror finish just a sold stainless type finish it would have had new. Maybe try getting the compound and a buffer wheel and hit yours with it first












The restored trim from wccc is very good but you need good cores to send it to offset the price. What every you do dont get the reproduction stuff!

Sanding was only way because there were so deep scratches and dents. With buffing wheel only they look ok, but my car is getting new paint so they are not going to look good in car

I assume you’re talking about restored trim from WCCC. I personally haven’t bought it, but Don stands behind what he sells. No reason not to order with confidence.

I have a restored stainless steel deck lid trim from WCCC on my car and it looks just like the original - minus the dent of course. I had been holding out for NOS, but the restored one is every bit as nice!

Your photos show scratch marks left by the 2000 grit paper. A real polish job would go to 3000 wet sanding, then use two or more steps of polishing using jewelers rouge on different buffer wheels.

I would say that the WCCC polished items are better than original.

I feel your stainless steel pain :frowning: What I do now if I can’t make them look good with rouge and a buffing wheel I stop at that point and send them out. Seems like whenever I try sanding and polishing they end up worse. You got time just send your trim out and get them professionally restored/polished.
Never been disappointed with Marco’s work. https://kingoftrim.com/services/

Marco sold the biz. I too used to use him.

This advice comes too late for you, alas, but for starters you might try rubbing wet aluminum foil on rusted chrome to remove the rust as explained here:
http://www.slipperyrockgazette.net/index.cfm/pageId/1948
I used naval jelly and sandpaper on the non-chrome stainless steel surface above the windshield in my ‘vert with predictably poor results, but when I used the aluminum foil on the turn signal lever it worked quite nicely. It doesn’t look like new but it certainly looks much better.

Going to keep Stainless discussion in one thread for future searchers.

I have some decent dents in the hood & deck stainless that I want to try to work out this winter. I’m thinking rollers may work on heated stainless. Any other ideas or suggestions in the approach? Thanks

Be careful what you use on the hood trim since it’s anodized aluminum, not stainless. I’ve used a small bodywork kit to work out small dents in stainless.

I’ve had good luck by cutting a small piece of 1/8 steel to fit the area of the dent, removing all sharp edges on it and hitting it with a blunt punch and hammer and of course the item has to be backed up with no air gap, I have not had good luck hammering and dolly just more tiny dents