Teardown

I took the grill shell apart last night.  A little "liquid loose" and some persuasion and most of the pieces came apart.  Amazingly I only had to torch off two nuts to remove the grill from shell.

Where does one purchase round head slotted machine screws?

Needed to pull out the fold here before removal of inner panel.

Better shot of inside condition of grill without the inner panel.

Some of the rusted away metal that came away from inner panel when it was removed.   Seen attached to back side of screw and nut.

Oh boy what have I gotten myself into.....

This is a locking tab for the cast piece that is in the center of the grill.

Another shot of inner panel connector with a bit of inner panel still attached.   Hmmm....

I haven't quite figured out if I'll have to remove each of these grill  pieces to clean and finish, or  if  the customer just  wants to do an exterior cleanup of the grill insert.

The chrome is actually a thin piece slide over a steel rib.  You can see one coming off  here.





Not sure how to deal with the broken or pitted pot metal insert the runs the entire length of the center of the grill.    Anyone have any suggestions ?

My first real project

I have a friend that has graciously decided that it would be cool to let me help him with some of his side jobs in auto restoration.  He just took in a 1936 Plymouth sedan and it is a fairly rare model so the owner wants to retain the original metal as much as possible.  I have been given the task of repairing the radiator grill shell/grill.

This will be my first attempt at a real life type job and I'm very excited and I won't lie a little intimidated.  I've always thrived on a challenge so....here goes.

The following will show progress pics of the work as I proceed and hopefully show a much improved piece than when I received it.

 Well here she is, not too bad for 75 yrs.

I'll need to replace most of this inner panel.

This is a nasty folded over lip that will definitely be seeing some heat.

Missing top center section of grill? 

 Small crack in headlight housing.

More dents on drivers side, and yes that's the trim piece sticking out!