Sharktooth grille repair

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Twisted71

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Hello all,

Here is some information and progress pics of my sharktooth grill and is a continuation of the gille in the "71 Duster sharktooth grill?" tread from 8-3-2008:
I have found that the best cement to use to fix broken areas and to
even recreate missing areas is PVC cement. It melts the plastic nicely and welds it back together. I even recreated a corner and rebuilt and reinforced the stock lower headlight bezel-mounting holes. I did add some thin brass drilled with holes and used epoxy to attach the brass.
As you can see from the pics, masking off each fin is a tedious task, but will be well worth it when it's done and will look more like what the factory intended. The closest paint match looks like the mopar argent silver from Eastwood Auto, and for the black I will use the Rustoleum for Plastic gloss black. This black isn't too glossy and closely matches the original paint on the top of the turn signal bezel. Most areas have seen so much weathering that you would think that the original paint was a flat black. But on top of the turn signal bezel where it stayed out of the weather, it is a gloss black.

To repair the broken corners of my turn signal bezels, I made a pattern from the non-broken one, and then traced this line onto the backside of the paper to make a guide for the missing holes on my broken one. I then used my pin vise and micro drills to make some holes into the plastic to run a reinforcement wire in the shape of the missing hole (midway between the inner and outer edges) super glued into place. Then using the pattern I drew, I shaped some masking tape to make a mould of the screw hole and filled it with epoxy.
Once dry, I cut and sanded the shape you can see in the pictures.

Only a true Mopar enthusiast would go to this much trouble masking off repairing etc...
Or maybe I'm just... TWISTED! :twisted:

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Wow...nice work TWISTED! Plenty of time on your hands I see! Hey when you finish it up...you can send it to Hawaii for a vacation...I'll make sure your grille enjoys the islands! ;)

Aloha, Mike
 
Thanks for the tip on the glue. I'll try that.

I'm currently "experimenting" on a busted up standard Duster grille. When I get it all figured out, I'll work on my sharktooth. So far, I've just tried crazy glue and baking soda. It's just ok. For small cracks, it would do the job. For structual repairs, no.

Meanwhile, I'll watch your progress. Looks good so far!
 
Hi Twisted - work you are doing on grille looks great.

Is there a reason why you decided to tape around fins instead of taping off each fin individually?

I am in middle of rebuilding 2nd grille right now.

I shot the middle section of it with Totally Auto Satin Black which also seems to be a pretty good match. I am in procees of taping off each fin - started this morning and am about 3/4 way done. It's going way faster than the first grille I did now that I have figured out how to speed up taping.

Another product you might want to try for the repairs is "Plastex" - plastic repair kit. It's a 2 part expoxy that works great. Eastwood carries this product.

On the first grille I did, I used Totally Auto's Grille Silver. It's ok, but I am not 100% happy with it from color standpoint and ease of applying. I shot a test piece with SEM Silver (part #15093) which looked pretty close to original color. I appreciate your comments on Eastood Silver you used. I am going to order that to see if its a better match than the SEM Paint.

Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing your tips!
 
Hey there dusta34065 and fellow A-Body folks!
Yea, the reason I taped it like this is to just paint the black portions of the grille! Next, I'll be removing all this intricate work and taping the black fins, top and bottom "tooth" supports and the lines between the teeth and then painting the silver. I ordered the Totally Auto Silver and Black as well and after testing them on some scrap plastic thought they were... Totally Junk! The silver was very mottled and the black came out of the can more of a charcoal color and then the can lost all of its pressure when I went to test it the next day!
Good thing they refunded my $$$.
Right now the car itself is in the shop getting switched back to a manual trans. That will make good use of the clutch pedal that has been flopped up onto the firewall since I bought the car! The column shifter and torque flight are helping to offset the cost. While the motor is out, the entire engine compartment is being stripped down and painted back to the original Lemon Twist. It’s a huge first step in my progressive restoration. Yea!
Thanks for all of your thumbs up! I think this site is great!
I'll try to take clearer pictures as I go along...
 
man that looks like it sucks taping all that off i cant wait to start mine i just have a hailine crack on the top to repair then paint
 
Nice work that grille looks good.

I kind of painted my shark tooth grille the opposite way you did. I sprayed the center section black then taped off all the fins in each section, then sprayed the silver.

I was going to tape off all of the fins individually but I think there were about 200 of them on the grille and it would have taken forever.
 
Hi Twisted71 - keep the pictures and info coming.

I'm wondering if you need to tape off the silver and then the fins like you are doing - not knocking what you are doing, just from my experience on first grille, painting fins black and then taping them off and shooting silver over worked ok. I am attaching some pictures of first grille I did over summer. If you look closely in 1st picture you can see missing fins I had to rebuild and just a "few" cracks that had to be repaired.

Fourth Picture shows black being applied before I taped off fins. I tried to keep overspray to a min. around fins so it looks like the fins aren't fully covered, but they are.

Last 2 pictures show finished product.

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Here are a couple of picture of 2nd grille I am redoing. You will notice I went a little heavier on black on this one. Hopefully I won't get in trouble when I shoot silver.

Also tape looks a little sloppy in close-up picture. I haven'y finished smoothing down tape on body of fins ( I'm not sure its a big issue as this is actually 2nd side from taping bottom and both top and bottom tape is tight against edges and fins - but it looks messy).

I ended up with a little over spray on main body which is in primer. It isn't a concern as I still have some work left on those part before painting.

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Yea, I thought about painting everything black first and then masking off the fins and painting the silver but I figured that it would be harder to cover with silver and It doesn't look like the factory did it this way either. Also, If I were to get any rock chips later, I won't show the black behind the silver. I guess I'm just anal that way! Hey, and don't forget to mask off your top and bottom supports and verticle lines between the teeth. These are supposed to be black as well.

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Ooo! Ooo!
I almost forgot! Here's the progress on the engine and trans...
Making progress! :burnout:

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Nice work.
I'll be showing pics of my plastic welding soon . Getting pretty good at it.
A couple things I should mention that may help... the plastic is actually ABS.
Most cements will bond all the types so its not biggie but, ABS spacific adhesive is black colored, more flamable and bonds ABS stronger.
Where possible and practicle, masking can be done with poster paper cut exactly to size . They can be reused, wherever deminsions repeat. Like just folded over those fins where are blacked first. If you predict the silver to bleed under those masks you're right. A close look at the factory paint job reveals the same. Your tape out results will be better than original. LOL
One more thing... that single edge razor blade shown in a pic, Is that all you're working with ? Harbor Freight Tools and others have a nice kit of exacto or hobby knives at 5 bucks or less. Worth their weight in gold to me.
Happy moparing :)
 
Nice work.
I'll be showing pics of my plastic welding soon . Getting pretty good at it.
A couple things I should mention that may help... the plastic is actually ABS.
Most cements will bond all the types so its not biggie but, ABS spacific adhesive is black colored, more flamable and bonds ABS stronger.

Please DO post pics and any tips re: plastic welding. Also, can you recommend a specific product for ABS repairs?
 
Yea, the thought crossed my mind early on to make a template mask out of something like styrene plastic. So I got my micrometer out to measure the distance between the fins, and there are hardly 2 that are the same! Weird huh? I figure this was done as a visual effect when viewing the grille at a top down angle or something. At any rate i began masking... I do have X-acto knives and such; I just found more control with the Stanley blade as I also use it as a smoother to get the mask right up to the edge. Thanks all!
 
Please DO post pics and any tips re: plastic welding. Also, can you recommend a specific product for ABS repairs?

On Moparts board there has been some recent discussion about ABS repair methods:

Member by name ScottSmith_Harms (his work comes highly recommended) -thanks for sharing Scott had following post to question posted:

I need to repair a few broken off molding tabs on a 70 cuda grille. These are cleanly broken off, they are too small or delicate to plastic weld back on.
I remember that someone posted here, that there is a solvent for ABS that can be used to join pieces that fit toghether well. It basically patially dissolved the plastic and fused it toghether.
Anyone remembers what its called and where to buy it?

Scott's Answer -It's called MEK (Acetone works to). Mix up some in a glass jar with some shavings of ABS (old grille pieces work well) and let it sit overnight (it will melt into goo) you want to end up with a mix that's something roughly the consistancy of wet peanut butter. Prep the edges of both pieces of the part by sanding them to a beveled edge, point the edges together aligning them and use clear packing tape to secure them and keep them aligned from the underside. Smear a nice pile of the goo into the new joint on the top side until it's piled high like a weld in metal. Let it dry a couple days, sand smooth. For thicker parts do the same process on both sides repeating the process the same way.

There is some additinal info in thread that look really helpful - might want to check it out
 
Yep that's what I'm talking about! The PVC cleaner and adhesive I mentioned earlier also does ABS etc... Great idea about making a filler out of plastic bits and glue! Rock on! :toothy10:
 
Acetone will melt the material. It is the main ingredient in pipe cleaner and adhesive.
The clear plastics adhesive works on abs, pvc, pcvc, etc.. due to its blend.
ABS spacific adhesive doesn't have the other components an wont glue pvc
properly. I'm no chemist but I do remember the days of black glue for black pipe (abs) and white glue for white pipe (pvc) .
 
Hey all,

Not so much progress on the grill for right now...
But check out the rest of the car! Yea!!:cheers:

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