'67-'68 (maybe '69 too?), Grill Surround repair kit
I paid a shop in LA to restore my surrounds( the outer-most 1" wide aluminum strip. They replated the anodize, cleaned up and polished my chrome headlight surrounds and cleaned all the remaining parts. I was able to use 2 different sized common rivets to reassemble everything.
Does your kit include dies to straighten the surrounds or just rivets and tools to "pop" them into place? I just used a common rivet gun. It worked perfectly.
I reassembled everything, painted the argent portions with a rattle can and they came out looking like new. I know I would have never gotten my smashed up aluminum surrounds to look anything like they did. It's amazing to me that people have these skills. It's beyond me. I swear these guys could straighten a smashed aluminum can if you wanted them to.
They charged me $2000 including shipping both ways, but It was well worth it to me. They wanted nearly $4000 to completely restore them including repainting the argent, the black strip on the surrounds, the grills themselves and final assembly. I'm glad I didn't pay that much, as painting the remaining parts and reassembling the grills was not that bad of a job. Especially with the help and photos from members here.
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Looks like the work of King Of Trim?
They look Great! NOT cheap, but they look like new!
No dies for straightening, just tools to crimp/roll the original style rivets, and set the studs.
I drove down from HMB to hand deliver mine to King of Trim, I had 3 sets that needed straightening and decided to just have them all fixed and bright dipped,(didn't trust USPS, or UPS, guess I have trust issues, Ha!), and they did a great job on mine too. I had mine painted by a guy,(local) and now am going to try to complete the assembly.
I didn't want to use pop-rivets, call me hard headed...(or what-ever), but I want to put them back together as close to original as possible.
This would be something that maybe guy that have a rare car that they want to show/judged, I would thing judges would take off points if they saw pop rivets, but who knows...(my car's not, but i'm hard headed)
I think I may make three sets of tools, (depending on how much the machine shop is going to charge me)
Maybe I will offer the hardware kit with the option to RENT the tools to assemble, since it is sort of a one time deal, unless you want to go into the business of rebuilding grills.
I'm going to try to take good pics of the assembly process an where i used the different length rivets, to assist with the kit/rebuild process.
Would like to here from others as well on what you think.
Thanks!