Straightening and Polishing Stainless Steel and Aluminum Trim

In the process of restoring my Corvair I found a lot of trim pieces that were not as shiny, straight or dent free as I liked. I was able to find some used pieces and bring them with me to Bolivia, but even those were not in great shape. There are a lot of pictures of that process on different pages of this site.

By popular request, I’ve summarized the restoration process in the attached pdf file. Feel free do download it and restore your trim.

Here are some before and after shots from the process.

The first pictures are close-ups before and after for a piece of the stainless steel trim around the windshield.

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Here we can see the straightened and half polished rear molding
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Here it is after fixing and installing on the car.
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Here is what can be done with the anodized aluminum headlight bezels. This requires removing the original anodizing and a little more care in sanding.
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