working and mounting trim

[geraldchainsaw]

hi,   took off the top quarter panel trim on my conv,   after spending 8 hours dinging filing and sanding & then polishing,  i was almost finished and at the last swipe of the polishng wheel it got wrapped up in the bufffing wheel,  and it was so straight,  not now butr its usuable,   now for my question,  has anyone taken off the chrome strip i'm talking about,  i donb'td know if i'm supposed to mount the trim brackets first and try to pop the tgrim back on???,  and also where can u get the mounting brackets???,  and i think your supposed to get inside the car and twist the brackets so they stay on,   anyone know???,  thanks    jerry

[JimNolan]

Jerry,
   I bought new trim for my 57, around $600.00 and then I proceded to install them. The mounting clips on the end were a no-brainer as they were held on with nuts. But, the mounting clips that you snap the trim over was something else. The mounting clip goes on first and then all you do is snap the trim over it. Ya Right. I put a small dent in one piece of trim trying to push the trim over the mounting clip (barely noticeable) so I stopped right there and ordered every mounting clip like the ones on the end. The ones that have the screw and you put the nut on from inside the car. It was hard reaching every mounting clip to put the nuts on, but, after it was done it looked great. I know you're an older gentleman just like me and our bones don't work and flex like they used to. But, if you have trouble as I did, it would pay you to hire a small boy to put the nuts on each mounting clip. Jerry, at Jerry's Classic Cars tried to tell me how simple the push on clips were. But, it was apparently too tough for me to figure out. Good luck. Jim

[RICH MUISE]

Those buffing wheels can be a major pain...figuratively and literally...when I first got my 6" buffer, it came with 1/2" wide buffing wheels and I was forever losing concentration on what I was doing and letting the wheel grab the piece. I picked up some full 1" wide wheels for it and it has greatly helped in reducing the grabbing. You can sometimes spend literally hours on a long or large piece buffing and it is so easy to let your mind wander and if you're not always aware of where the piece is in relation to the wheel edges in particular you can usually figure on another couple of hours repairing the damage. One side note on getting a piece ready for buffing - this should be another "cool tool" heading- I found some 4" wheels for a grinder that are a firm rubber-like material impregnated with diamond dust. It comes as a set of 4 or 5 wheels of different grit and the 2 finer ones are really good for gently removing dings and scratches...cuts down on the hand work tremendously. They worked great for my windshield trim because of the zillion little pits and dings the rest of the trim wasn't subjected to. To get those perfect I had to remove a few thousands off the entire surfaces of all 6 pieces before I could start finish sanding and buffing. Be careful with that bufffing wheel...it's one of those innocent looking tools that can hurt ya!  Rich