This afternoon we got a call from the body shop saying that our car was done. The plan is to pick it up tomorrow. Yippee.
We ordered some new trim pieces for the car, but we wanted to see if some could be saved, like our window sashes. No matter what the vintage, these pieces just don’t seem to last forever. These metal pieces (one goes at the top of each door) are covered with some kind of black, rubber-like substance. Over time, it cracks and flakes off, revealing the silver metal below.
To remove the black goo, we started with some sandpaper. That seemed to be taking too long, so we tried our Dremel tool. After we tore up our little wire wheel, we found a better solution: A sharp razor blade would easily slice off the black stuff. (And yes mom, we were careful.)
Once most of the black coating was gone, we then went over everything with some 180-grit sandpaper. We then wiped down the pieces with some solvent before breaking out the IES European Black Trim Paint. We applied a few light coats and are now waiting for everything to dry. It’s another humid night here in Florida, but hopefully we’ll have some dry trim pieces to install tomorrow.
And if our solution doesn’t look so hot, we’ll just order new ones.
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