Cool thanks a whole lot buddy, great info there. I do have another question though
what did you use for fixing cracks and most of all the plastic mounting tabs that break, crack or ect. on the grill and other places. Sorry if you already mentioned it.
Brad
I think I mentioned it on the last page of the thread when I posted all the pics during restoring the grille. But just incase Ill explain again for ya.
wherever there was a crack in the grill I took my dremmel tool with a small rotary bit on it (not a necessary step but it just saves a little time during the next step) and I carved a " V " into the crack.
I then took a soldering iron and let it get nice and hot.
Then I poked the tip of the iron into the crack and melted the V ....not enough that the soldering iron melted through to the other side but melted atleast a good 70% of the way through the thickness of the plastic.
and once it cooled I did the same process on the reverse side of the crack. that way I knew that the crack had been fully bonded back together from both sides.
after doing this you will have a ridge of melted plastic the spilled up over the edges of the "V"......so I took the soldering iron and melted that ridge of plastic back into the " V " which filled the crack back up.....I then ran the iron back and forth down the crack...super heating it and at the same time smoothing it out at the same time with the iron to insure that all the plastic melted and fused together nicely.
at this point its pretty smooth and shouldnt need much filler work being that not really any original material was removed.
but in my case I did decide in a few areas that I wanted to add a little extra plastic as filler. and I had an old grille out of my 05 f150 sitting in the shed so I went and snapped a couple chunks of the abs plastic off the back of it and then held a chunk with needle nose pliers and touched my soldering iron to it until I got a gob of melted plastic on the tip and then I just worked that melted plastic into any low spots that I was working on.
for the busted /missing tabs on my grille.....I took some of those chunks of abs plastic that I had from my f150 grille and I took a pair of side cutters and clipped the pastic to the shape that I wanted....and I held it in place where the missing part was at and I basically did the same process with the soldering iron to melt the "new" tabs into the grille. and then applied more melted plastic as filler where it was needed.
if your working in a screw hole area of a tab where for instance you need an oblonged/oval hole or round hole....dont worry about if you cut it perfectly with the side cutters....a tip ill give you is that I took the soldering iron and melted my screw hole openings to the shapes I desired.
once thats was all done I took a sanding disc on a wizzy wheel and I just sanded down any of the areas I worked on with it (sanding disc makes quick work of sanding the plastic).
once thats sanded down...its pretty close to paint ready at that point.
But I personally decided to mix of a little body filler to insure its smoothness. so I mixed up a small batch and took a credit card (easier to apply filler on the contours and tight areas due to the flexibility of the card versus a filler paddle)....I slapped some on.
then sanded it down with 180,then 220,then 320, then primed,then painted.
And the grille is just as stront as factory....after i did the work I twisted the grille.purposly put ALOT of pressure on the areas that had cracks,pulled,pryed.....held at one end with the other end extended in front of me to try and put alot of stress on it....and it didnt budge at ALL .....rock solid.
alot of guys will dink around with buying expensive jars of plastic welding solutions or dual syringe mixable stuff and then find down the road that it didnt hold or that the cracks show back through.....to each his own...but I personally have always welded plastics like this and always had good results.....and its free LOL
I think that should explain it all in depth for you and any one else that is interested. if you have any more questions just let me know.
