08.29.2004
It started out simply enough, I just wanted to put the laser-etched, stainless steel front plate that my good buddy, Dave Stahl made on the Thing. The plate was SO nice that I then had to start fixing up the rest of the front of the car to match!
The grille was dingy, so I disassembled the entire piece. I sandblasted the top piece and repainted it in a low gloss black. Then I broke out the polishing wheels and polished the metal trim. Then I taped off the metal trim and repainted the mesh with the low gloss black. I reassembled the whole thing (using the icky rusty bolts... have to do something about that) and I had to make my own metal tabs to secure the bottom of the grille to the plastic backing, as the previous owner had hacked up the original grille and lost/broke off the original tabs.
Then I had to remove the license plate bracket because it was covered in rust. Sandblasted that clean and then painted it Cast Gray. Then I reinstalled the front plate and everything looks great! (In My Opinion)
Once I got the grille together, I realized that the hood latch mechanism needed to be refinished as well. I didn't want to do anything with the original latch, a) it's a nice roadmap of how the front grille area was painted at the factory and b) with the AMX grille I can't use that kind of latch.
So I took the hood latch from the old car, sandblasted it and painted it a combination of flat black and semi-gloss black.
After Pics:
I'll address that issue at a later date.