Aluminum trim on front plastic grills.

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gwittman

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Has anyone ever tried to remove (without damaging) the aluminum trim around the plastic front grills? I have new grills with silver plastic and I would like to paint them black. It seems it would be easier to remove the aluminum trim for painting the plastic rather than trying to mask them. Any tips or suggestions?

Then again if removing the aluminum trim is not that difficult, maybe I can just install it on my old grills because the plastic on it is still in good condition. The aluminum trim is just somewhat pitted.
 
Yes, the anodized aluminum trim can be separated from the plastic grill, but only with great care. On the backside of the grill piece, you should see a whole series of partly crimped sections on the aluminum. Use a medium size flat screwdriver and gently pry out the crimps just enough to separate the mating surfaces. At this point, you should be able to separate the two halves of the aluminum from the plastic piece, but do so with the utmost care as you do not want to break any parts of the grill assembly. If these grills are original and have never been taken apart, then there should be no adhesive used. Take care in not losing the 2 connectors for the aluminum trims as they are not available by themselves.

As for the reinstallation process, the brightworks should snap back into place fairly tightly, but you should a series of hot glue dabs or epoxy along the mating surfaces to hold them together securely. Don't think one should try to crimp these trims back on without damaging them.

As far as painting the plastic grills, you may consider the Krylon plastic paints where not much prepping is needed. Have heard many good things about this particular painting product.

Here are some pics of the disassembled grill pieces.
P1040054.jpg


P1040055.jpg


P1040058.jpg
 
Last edited:
Hi Bert...

You are clearly the consummate perfectionist!

It's no wonder that both of your vehicles are down at present as likely they
both are on strike and simply refuse to run, drive or start now that they look so darned good!


Cheers@!

Ran
 
jranmann said:
Hi Bert...

You are clearly the consummate perfectionist!

It's no wonder that both of your vehicles are down at present as likely they
both are on strike and simply refuse to run, drive or start now that they look so darned good!


Cheers@!

Ran
Click to expand...

Randy,

Not a perfectionist, but a procrastinator!
 
I did it on some aluminum trim on another one of my older non-BMW cars. It is anodized so I don't know of easy way to do it. You can polish it until the anodize is gone (or strip and polish) to get it to shine but then you don't have the protective anodize.

The best way to do it is to strip the anodize, polish to desired finish then re-anodize with clear anodize.

You could also put a thin clear coating on after polishing but it is not as hard as anodize and may not hold up as well.
 
The lore among the Alfa Romeo community is that Easy Off oven cleaner will remove the anodize used on aluminum windshield surround trim. I have tried it, and it does work - some areas require multiple coats.

With the anodize off, you can polish the soft aluminum. Of course, without re-anodizing, it is vulnerable to oxidation and pitting from road debris. But then too, it is easy to re-polish.
 
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