County98's Learn as I Go Thread

[County98]

Finally got around to a pic of the lower grill installed. Matches up...kind of.

Use a size oversized on the sheetmetal screws. At least I needed to. I started by loosely putting on the lower side screws, then tilting it up like a hinge. It's a PITA trying to see and line up the holes and then fit a tool through the access ports. It works though, just needs a bit of patience.

[County98]

I jump around on projects a lot, in case you couldn't tell. If it starts getting tedious, I work on something else.

Decided to try my hand at polishing the rear window today. Came out much improved from before, but I rushed it a bit I think. At least I know my glass is usable, albeit a little scratched up.

3 stages, 4 if you count final cleaning. I watched a bunch of video's and settled somewhere between buying some high mocus stuff and the DIY version.

One thing I needed to get was a rotary sander/polisher. I have one, but it's a DA, so if I put pressure on it, it stops spinning. Went to Harbor Freight and picked up a straight rotary for $39.

Pic from way before in the thread. So much mineral buildup, the windows were almost opaque. AMAZ cleaner took off the bulk of it, but I always had ghost milky areas. Finally dawned on me it was probably sandblasted glass areas.

Stage 1 is a medium foam wheel and Meguiar's liquid rubbing compound.

Stage 2 is fine foam and Meguiar's liquid polishing compound.

Stage 3 is an Ultra Fine foam and Ceriglass Polish.

This is very messy, 2k RPMs throws polish and water everywhere. It's also a hell of an arm and shoulder workout.

Couple live and learn items, if (and when) I do this again for a final on all the glass, it's way easier with 2 people. The glass will get hot. Too hot and it's bad news. Keep a mister of clean water in a bottle and when the polisher starts dragging, mist the whole window with water and keep going. If I had a second person to work the water, I wouldn't have had to keep stopping and changing sides, etc.

Secondly, I found out watching videos DURING my stage 2 break was that pro polishers will sometimes spend an hour on the first stage. Makes sense, but I didn't know, so I probably did 20-30 minutes on each stage. The final would have come out better if I spent more time on the first cut.

Final product is still much improved from before though. Glass is useable and I'm happy with it.

Still need to clean up trim and clips, etc.

[tony66]

Great job on the glass restoration. I'm going to try it on one of my cloudy windows. Regarding stripping anodize from aluminum, Eastwood used to sell an anodize remover in a spray bottle. I used it about 10 years ago on my El Camino side window trim and it worked great to for stripping and then was able to polish with great success. There are some other DYI options that I didn't bother to try since the Eastwood stuff was cheap enough at the time.

About 10 years before I stripped the anodize from the aluminum trim, it didn't look all that great with fresh paint on the car. My solution at the time was to simply clean and spray a light coat of clear on the trim to give it a little more reflection / brightness. It wasn't the optimal solution, but it did looked better.

[County98]

Thanks, and I'll definitely check out Eastwood for it.

Didn't know about the yellow can Easy Off either. Now I have a new experiment to try, lol.

[County98]

Haven't done much lately, lots of storms and chores.

Finally got my Clarks order in though and thought I'd do a quick review on their trim insert. Overall, I'd give it a 8 of 10 maybe.

Looks nice coming out of package and came in a nice box.

Up close though, there's some manufacturing blemishes that I think could be avoided, and are probably on all of them.

The back shows where it was probably held during stamping and folding the edge.

On the front face, shows dimples in all 4 places.

Screws are countersunk chrome (or stainless). The issue I didn't know about that might help folks with mismatched parts is that my (non-corsa) panel had no countersunk holes. I knew about having to drill, but the countersink never crossed my mind.

I marked the 4 middle holes, drilled pilots, then started putting the trim on. After the centers, I just drilled and put in the screws. Whole thing took 20 minutes. BUT, my screw heads stick out a bit.

Overall, pretty happy and I'll keep it, just not perfect.

[County98]

One other easy thing that was confusing to find a straight answer to online was the body and Engine big grommets. I checked the assembly manual and it had a couple answers, but you have to jump around sections and it's not the greatest to be honest. I just may not be familiar enough with it though.

Anyway, Clark's has a grommet sheet that's free, so I threw it in my order and here it is if anyone needs some help.

[Project65]

I think you did a vairy nice job on the chrome insert. I’ve also seen some imperfections with some of the Clark’s parts.

Nice tip about the grommet sheet! Thanks