Thread: '37 Oze build

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I did some more work on my poorly made grille today. Since I've already filed through the chrome in a couple of places, I decided to do some more grinding to make the fit at the top even better. Only a few minutes with a belt sander accomplished that.

I still needed to get the top fin up higher, so I bent the lower portion where it wraps under the nose, in order to allow the grille to come up a little higher. While I was doing that, I noticed what looked liked bubbles in the chrome, so I got out an Xacto knife and poked on one of the bubbles, to see if it was hollow. Sure enough, the chrome was coming loose. I easily scraped a long stretch right off. The under side of the chrome was black, indicating that it was applied to dirty metal. The bare spot is along the top edge of the lowest part, on the right side. There's even a little curled up chrome hanging along the edge. If you click on the picture, it should take you to my photo bucket library. There you can zoom in on the picture for a closer look. One of the other things that you can see is the big globs of mig weld on the under side of the fins, at the center. While this places then out of your direct view when standing in front of the car, you still see the welds as a reflection in the fin just below the weld. The welds all need to be behind the fin, where they can't be seen.



I noticed that the grille rattled a little some times, so I inspected the fins more closely and found a broken weld along the center rib, on the 9th fin from the top. With a MIG welder, it's easy to place a big glob of metal, but have no penetration.

If I want to have the grille powder coated, it looks like I need to take it to a plating shop, just to have the chrome stripped off. I was thinking of just a light sand blast to improve the powder coat adhesion, but if more chrome falls off, then so will the powder coat. It's bad if you have to pay extra, just to get a paint-grade grille.