Spring Cleaning has begun...

[occupant]

My car may be a complete pile, but having the warm enough weather, the products ready to use, and the girls in daycare, means I have a chance to make the best of what I've got. So here's the best I can do as far as before (2/27/10) and after (today 3/18/10). I will post more tomorrow when I actually WASH the car. But today I had to see what can be done about a few things.

The tires and hubcaps were probably the ugliest thing about the car. I haven't shined them since...ever...

I haven't really got a before picture of the front of the car. But here's a few pictures showing how it looks now, before any chrome polish is applied, before any clay is put on the paint, and before I swap out grille inserts for one that isn't cracked...

For those of you wondering about the hit and run, I got the wrong tail light...

...it was from a base model Torino and doesn't have the right bezel, so I'm shopping for another. I have sourced three different bumpers. One is smooth, no rub strips or bumper guards, for $50. I don't want that one. Another has the rub strips and bumper guards but like mine, it is missing the rubber strips on the guards. I might go for that, the seller hasn't stated a price yet but it's the same guy with the $50 bumper. Might also be $50. And then there's a perfect bumper in Austin for $175. I'll buy filler panels from whoever I get the bumper from, and get 9D Polar White from NAPA to paint them before putting them on. I only need the one corner, but the other two are stress cracked and it's only a matter of time before they start crumbling. Same guy with two bumpers claims to have the tail light I need, too. So I'm visiting him on Monday. He even has an uncracked right front marker lens. I need to make good friends with this guy, he's got five or six 70s Ford/Mercury intermediates I can buy parts from. And he wants some bits off my wagon so maybe I'll let him have the whole wagon in trade for the bits I need now.

Now for an actual QUESTION for you guys. This is what I believe is stainless trim on my grille surround. It's the same stuff that is on my windshield and back window trim. It has a rainbow haze which is what, oxidation? What should I use on it?

I have the following items now and I'm willing to buy whatever is needed. I prefer to work by hand (and until I buy a quality cordless drill, I'm forced to do so):

Stoner Tarminator
Stoner Invisible Glass
Stoner Trim Shine
Stoner More Shine Less Time
Turtle Wax Chrome Polish
Windex
paper towels
an unused yellow microfiber towel from a Shell gift pack
red shop rags, some used, some new
WD-40
carb cleaner
brake parts cleaner

On my wish list is:

Meguiar's Quik Detailer
microfiber cleaning cloths
some sort of clay bars
sandpaper
sanding block
hammer and dolly kit (for the hail dents I can reach)

My Wal-Mart sorta let me down today. They didn't have the Mothers chrome polish I wanted so I got the Turtle Wax stuff on clearance for a buck. They also had something else I really needed, clearance oil. I bought 3 5qt bottles of Pennzoil 20W50 for $15. A dollar a quart! But they were OUT of Motorcraft FL-1A filters. So I have to go back some other time for those. The guy looked at his paperwork for what's on the truck tonight. The filters had NOT been ordered. Strange since it's one of the most popular SKU's. Someone must have cleaned them out after inventory.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, what should I do about that trim? I'll have the grille surround off while I exchange inserts so I can bang out two dings in it. I want it to look real nice when I put it back on.

 

[mrclean81]

My 79 F150 done the same thing. It wasn't too bad though. I just took some Mothers aluminum polish and a Power Ball mini to it and it cleaned up ok. I'm planning to replace all the trim when I paint it this summer so I didn't worry too much with it. For older vehicals with a lot of chrome, aluminum, or stainless trim, a Powerball would be your best friend. I don't suggest the big one though. The mini or the cone is a lot more versatile. The trim can always be restored to look like new by sanding, but it takes hours and if your not careful it could turn out worse than when you started. You can take 600 or so, sand out all the scratches and flaws, go to 800, then 1200, then something really fine like 1500 or even 2000, keeping every scratch straight and flowing the same direction. Go over it with some polish, and it will look like a mirror. Like I said, this could take days if there is a lot of trim, and I definatly suggest taking it off the car to do it. This can't be done on chrome but your grill and parts like that would be fine. Have you tryed an acid based cleaner on any of the chrome? A lot of times a good wire wheel cleaner will remove surface rust and bring new life to older parts as well as wheels. Nice looking car btw.

 

[occupant]

The bumper chrome is in great shape and it shines like this with just invisible glass and paper towels. The bumper bolts in the middle up front were covered by a "TRY JESUS" sticker that was all tore up. They don't have a lot of chrome left on them. That's where I'm going to try this Turtle Wax chrome polish first. If they don't clean up, I'm just going to get new ones. Now the bumper guards are a problem area. I guess they have a thinner plating on them because they have this cracked haze all over on one side of each. I need to get a better picture of this but they look like tiny little cracks all over. No surface rust I don't think, but it's something odd.

So these grill surrounds are aluminum, not stainless? Learn something new every day. I'll definitely have it off the car because it has to come off to change the plastic part of the grille. This surround has fewer dings than the one off the wagon, but the wagon's plastic is better. I'll Frankenstein this thing a little more by swapping emblems and I'll pick the nicest of the parking lenses, too. But I want to clean it nice before I put it back on the car and I'll want to do it all at once. My car serves triple duty at the moment, running my girls back and forth to day care, doing any shopping/food/cigarette/whateverthewifewants runs, and really until my wife fixes the air/heat in hers, it's going to sit. Black interior and no tint up front in her truck, versus blue interior and semi-cold air in my car. Miles are adding up quicker than ever this spring!

I don't want to go the sanding route until later. When I take this car in for paint in a year or three, I'm keeping all the trim at home to keep me busy for the weeks I expect this car to take in process. Everything is going to look like brand new when it goes back on the car. But I will certainly try the aluminum polish. I'll try it on a section of the wagon's grille surround first to see how well it works, since that's a part I don't intend to use. It has like six dings and a long deep scratch compared to the sedan's two dings and no scratches. I like having a parts car to try stuff out on. I think I'll hold onto it awhile longer even though I already pulled every part I want off of it.

And by the way it's getting Nighthawk Black Pearl, black with those blue flakes, awesome color

 

[RANDAL]

First disclaimer. Im on dialup and have only seen the tires and hub caps. 1st get rid of the Walmart Xtrac tires. They are a low end tire with only a 1 ply sidewall, and 3 ply tread. They also dont have the load carrying capacity rating needed for that heavy of a car. I had that size on a 4 cylindar Tempo that I sold when I quit working on tire at WALMArt. Find some 225/R14, which should be the closer to correct tire size. As for cleaning up chrome and some aluminum, I used a lot of Poorboys Pro Polish and Pro Polish 2. Realy cleans up old chrome and glass very well. Also get a bunch of MF towels from either f the sites sponsors or for chrome and windows go to SaMS club and get package of the orange MF towels there, they arnt the best, but cleaning up 40 year old chrome doesnt require a $6 extra plush MF towel. Just dont go with the real cheap0 ones from WALMART for this, as they arnt thick enough and will wear through on those edges on the old chrome. (Been there done that.) Also look into a PC 7424 for polishing the flatter surfaces, includeing the glass with some pads and the Pro Polish. Your pads and twels will be extremely dirty after cleaning all that, so have plenty of them. 4-8 pads, 20+ MF towels. Hope that helps.

 

[occupant]

First disclaimer. Im on dialup and have only seen the tires and hub caps. 1st get rid of the Walmart Xtrac tires. They are a low end tire with only a 1 ply sidewall, and 3 ply tread. They also dont have the load carrying capacity rating needed for that heavy of a car. I had that size on a 4 cylindar Tempo that I sold when I quit working on tire at WALMArt. Find some 225/R14, which should be the closer to correct tire size. As for cleaning up chrome and some aluminum, I used a lot of Poorboys Pro Polish and Pro Polish 2. Realy cleans up old chrome and glass very well. Also get a bunch of MF towels from either f the sites sponsors or for chrome and windows go to SaMS club and get package of the orange MF towels there, they arnt the best, but cleaning up 40 year old chrome doesnt require a $6 extra plush MF towel. Just dont go with the real cheap0 ones from WALMART for this, as they arnt thick enough and will wear through on those edges on the old chrome. (Been there done that.) Also look into a PC 7424 for polishing the flatter surfaces, includeing the glass with some pads and the Pro Polish. Your pads and twels will be extremely dirty after cleaning all that, so have plenty of them. 4-8 pads, 20+ MF towels. Hope that helps.

First, I don't have $78 or $82 each plus shipping, mounting, balancing, and disposal fees to go out and just BUY 4 new tires. And there aren't a lot of tires that are available in 225+ width AND 14-inch wheel diameter. Recognize:

BFGoodrich Radial T/A

Firestone Firehawk Indy 500

and two Firestone Destination truck tires...I'm not putting truck tires on a car. I intend to, as soon as I have the time AND the money, buy a set of four Crown Victoria steel wheels with 225/60/16 tires already on them, which is equal to 225/70/14 in dimensions like diameter and width. But that time has not come yet and I have not yet made that money.

These Douglases are on there now. They'll stay on until they're down to 2/32, or explode, or catch on fire, or develop golf ball-sized bubbles. And how. But while trying to look up speed ratings and load indexes for these "awful" tires, I found that this particular size of the Douglas was involved in a 400,000 tire recall. And wouldn't you know, this car, when that recall was issued, was sitting in a pawn shop parking lot. And I bought it from that pawn shop on eBay. And I never checked to see if the tires were any good, because they had no bubbles, no broken belts, and plenty of tread. I have a wobble at 58-60mph. So I either drive above or below that speed. But I checked the DOT code and yes, these tires are part of that recall. So I will be going to my local Wal-Mart today (with no receipt since I didn't buy the tires anyway) to see about replacements. I don't have any money. The best I can do is pay for the mounting/balancing and maybe the road hazard certificates.

So as soon as day care calls I'm off to Wally World. And I won't buy the 12 MF towels for $5 that I saw yesterday when I got the oil. They didn't feel right anway. I didn't figure they were some kind of miracle product for that price because the shelf was full all the way to the back wall with them. I figured they had to suck. How much you guys wanna bet they don't have any good 14-inch tires when I get there?

 

[occupant]

Wow, I feel like a really special customer today.

Wal-Mart: That recall is expired, you'll have to contact Goodyear to find out if any extensions have been made, but no sir, we're not going to honor this recall.

Goodyear: I don't stock that size in any brand and I'm not ordering it for some 2 year old recall. And I don't have time to go look up another store that does. Get out of here, I have paying customers to wait on.

So I went to a junkyard. And I busted up my ratchet getting one of them, but I have the first of four P225/60R16 tires on CV steelies to go on the car. Test fitted in the attachment...and by the way Randal, the Douglases on my car have a 2-ply sidewall and 4-ply tread, not 1 and 3. The load rating is 1554 per tire, which is just a hair over my 6200GVWR. Good enough. But I like these 16's and I'll like them even better when all 4 are on and I slap a set of chrome trim rings on, too. The Eagle RS-A's on the 16's are fine, too. I'll go get at least one more tomorrow when I remember to bring a lug wrench and something to hold the wheel still. There's one more tire with 5/32" tread. The other two on that car are...well...balder than an eagle. I might get them anyway to do a couple of burnouts and then go buy two brand new tires. I do need the wheels. I was smart enough to get all 4 center caps and some extra collared lug nuts while I was there. I spent a mere $37 today for the wheel, the caps, the lugs, and two wiring pigtails for my backup lights. I LOVE JUNKYARDS!!!!!