98 LSC grille question

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Blenderhead

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I'm repainting the front bumper and grille on my MarkVIII. The bumper I stripped everything down completely, did the needed body work, and primed it. I have the grille out, and it was painted once before, and they didn't use any flex additive, so its all spidering and flaking off in certain spots. Does anyone know an easier way to strip all the paint off this thing without destroying it, other than sitting there with the sand paper for several hours sanding off each individual bar on the grille? Also, the one that I have is plastic. I know the non-LSCs had a chrome grille, was that chrome over plastic too, or were those grilles metal? If they are metal, does anyone have one for sale? Thanks.

Mike
 
Not sure about the grille being metal. I know the gen 1's were 'plastichromed' plastic, so I'd bet more towards gen 2 'chrome' grilles being plastic also. Good luck though. Sanding the plastic grille doesn't sound like fun at all.
 
I'm not a painter but they do have chemical dips to help strip paint or you could have it media/soda blasted
 
I ended up just sanding the thing. I would be worried about a chemical stripper or media blasting damaging the plastic. What I did instead was I took a DA with some 180 to the entire outside edge and the front of all the vertical bars, and stripped it down to the bare plastic. Then I roughed up between the bars with a red scotch brite pad, and primed it with some high-build primer. I painted the bars black and clearcoated them, but I was spraying outside by the side of a building, so between the primer and the clearcoat, some dirt and stuff got in there, so the plan now is to wetsand the outside edge and the fronts of the bars, redo the black and clear, then mask off the center part and paint the outside edge at the same time as the bumper.
 
gotta have the flex additive on the plastic stuff.
 
I hear ya there.... I never want to see another buffer again...
 
I get off easy on that...my car is white! If it were black, I would paint it myself and pay to get it detailed. Buffing black cars SUCKS! The only problem with my car is that it is the pearl white, so I'm doing all the prep work and my friend's brother (who paints cars for a living) is going to lay down the paint. I have a feeling if I did it myself, the pearl probably would be so far off it isn't funny. Hopefully it will match close enough when its done, but if not, oh well, at least it will look better than it was.
 
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