Thread: Stainles trim

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My 53 has trim that goes around the entire car. Most is dented , and not by removing either . Anyone know of a place that repairs this. I knew a guy in Chicago but if he is still doing it he's doing for the Lord. Buying new is out of the question.
Thanks
Charlie

I'd also be interested in this. my '51 chevy has a couple peices that are dented/ mangled and have holes from sheet metal screws in them, and there not available repro.

Yea the guy that used to do mine could repair those holes and you'd never know they were there. He'd send it back it looked like new.

Back in the late'60's early '70's there wa a tech editor for Street Rodder that published a whole series of articles on the subject. I can't remember his name, he drove a '40 Coupe he'd had for ages, but the articles were well written and full of descriptive pictures. I remember it was labor intensive and very tedious and when done thay looked good as new.

According to my limited experience in plating shops there are two possible cases.

First if the piece is chrome PLATED it should be chemically stripped by reverse plating in an acid bath. Then standard body techniques can be used such as welding but no bondo use. Then it needs to be polished smooth as the steel form and then plated successively with Cu, Ni and finally Chrome by a plating shop. Each step will actually be in two parts with a "strike" plate step where higher voltage is used at a lower amperage followed by a "plate" step which uses just enough voltage to plate that metal but with higher current (amperage) to carry a lot of metal to the surface. Thus the plating shop will do a Cu strike and plate, a Ni strike and plate and then a Cr strike and plate. The way to repair pitting is to use extra heavy or multipe layers of Cu followed by polishing. For instance a corroded hood ornament made from some white metal casting will require several, perhaps many, steps of Cu plating followed by polishing the shape after each layer of plate to fill in pit holes. There is an element of craftsmanship at that step. The three metals used are sequenced to provide an internal voltage difference between the layers in such a way as to discourage corrosion, the use of three metals is standard procedure.

Second, the trim may be entirely solid stainless steel as I recall is the case for '40 Ford trim. In that case body work techniques can be used like a hammer and dolly with a fine pointed hammer followed by buffing of the stainless. If there are holes, I believe you can get welding done with a stainless rod and then polish the result. If seams show, more stainless weld can be built up and then polishing and buffing can be used to smooth out the weld.

Clearly either way it is a labor of love and tedious. I am most familiar with the plating process and remind folks that nothing comes out of the tank any shinier than when it went in, meaning that a good polishing wheel is essential between plating steps. In the two plating shops I worked in there were teams of folks who just did polishing and folks who set up the plating tanks and my job at those sites was maintaining the concentration of the chemicals in the large baths within the allowed concentration limits. Imagine my surprise one day when I looked into a 300 gallon tank and my oh my there was a complete motorcycle chassis in there getting Ni plated! How did whoever get that through the security gate? Reminds me of Johnnie Cash's Cadillac one piece at a time. Anyway to answer the question, the best thing to do is work with a local plating shop and be willing to pay their price for restorative plating. As to welding stainless you need to find out how/where/who to/will be able to weld holes in stainless trim with a stainless rod and then polish, polish, polish.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Don Shillady

what about cutting a peice of pure polished stainless down and welding it back up? I could get a door trim peice for a 2dr reproduction, which is a longer peice. 4dr peices are hard to find in good shape and not available reproduction. I could get the fender spears off Ebay for $20-50 a pair

I suppose the worst case is trying to "fill" a pit or dent, but cutting followed by polishing should work if it is indeed stainless through and through (stainless is steel with chromium in it as an alloy). I can understand why a 1940 Ford might have solid stainless trim before WWII but bumpers and trim certainly suffered from louzy plating due to a Cr shortage during the Korean conflict. Considering Chevy was the low end of the product line, I would wonder if it had solid stainless as compared to plated steel. However if you think you can cut, grind and polish the piece to look good and it turns out to be plated you can still get it replated, but if you cut into a plated piece it will probably flake along the cut. I think the answer to your question is that you can do it provided you can make the piece look good after the cut and then replate it if need be. The issue is to make a smooth modification. Any imperfections should be filled/fixed with Cu plating rather than Pb since Pb is too soft for this application.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

I suppose the worst case is trying to "fill" a pit or dent, but cutting followed by polishing should work if it is indeed stainless through and through (stainless is steel with chromium in it as an alloy). I can understand why a 1940 Ford might have solid stainless trim before WWII but bumpers and trim certainly suffered from louzy plating due to a Cr shortage during the Korean conflict. Considering Chevy was the low end of the product line, I would wonder if it had solid stainless as compared to plated steel. However if you think you can cut, grind and polish the piece to look good and it turns out to be plated you can still get it replated, but if you cut into a plated piece it will probably flake along the cut. I think the answer to your question is that you can do it provided you can make the piece look good after the cut and then replate it if need be. The issue is to make a smooth modification. Any imperfections should be filled/fixed with Cu plating rather than Pb since Pb is too soft for this application.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

there pure stainless to my knowladge, rust stuck to some of my trim from the car body but it scratches right off, they polish up with regular polishing compounds.

Well it could still be a good and heavy chrome plate job but as I said if so you can get it replated if indeed is is not stainless throughout the piece. I recently messed with repro 1929 inside door handles on my roadster and actually bought door handles from three different sources and none of them would fit on the chrome looking square shaft on the outside door handle that comes through the door. Finally I got a set of small files and started to file down the shaft and on one side I filed a lot off and it was still chrome but on the other side I filed just a tiny bit too much and a small piece of plate flaked off revealing steel underneath so maybe in some cases the chrome plating is really good and thick on your pieces. Still if you saw or cut them in some manner you will find out if they are plated. Fortunately the plate chip that flaked off my door shaft is not visible and all I had to do is give it a tiny spray of paint for rust protection and tighten the set screw a little more and nobody but us knows the difference. If you make a cut and the plate flakes off along the edge it will probably be possible to buff polish the edge using the direction of the brush head away from the edge and blend in the thin chrome edge and then have it replated. We should mention one other option, If the chrome is not salvagable or available you can just say you saw too many pictures of Barris Customs and "dechromed" the car by filling in all the mounting holes. Back in the mid-50s that was the style. Dechrome, fill and paint smooth. I am attaching another Chevy (it might be an Oldsmobile which had a similar body, but he was moving at the time and I was lucky to get this quick picture without time to look at the sticker on the windshield) which I think was/is a '52 which has modified the chrome a lot along with frenched headlights and a newer V8. I also saw a neat '39 Ford convertible at the same meet with reversed door hinges and the owner/builder painted the whole car the same aqua-green over everything, bumpers, grill and remaining trim pieces and it looked good so another option is to just smooth the trim and paint it the same color as the body.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Matt, I think this does need a bit more chrome and the '39 grill ('40 Standard) is one of the prettiest when chromed but maybe in the scheme of things this owner will graduallyadd some chrome later. However you can see that all the hood and body chrome has been eliminated and it looks good to me. How about those reversed door hinges! But then again I did look at a lot of pictures of Barris Customs so "dechromed" looks good to me but now I have stainless bumpers on my '29 and that looks good too. I think it just comes down to the situation that if you have the chrome and you want it then do so but if you don't then dechrome it smooth or paint over the faulty chrome.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder