Well now that I have the correct headlight doors I have been trying to figure out how I want to paint them. I am not sure if my car is actually Saturn Yellow, or some other yellow, so paint matching would be pretty difficult. Has anyone ever painted their bezels all black or silver? I thought the blacked out look might be cool and simple.... at least as a temporary solution until I repaint the whole car.
You can strip the paint from the 72 bezels and they are all chrome underneath....then just spray the headlight recessed area charcoal or satin black for an original look.
Since it is a 72 it was not Saturn yellow at least from the factory. In 72 I recall they made Sunburst yellow. But in any case getting a match is no issue. Just go to a paint store with the car in a clean condition. They will use a hamdheld sensor to mix the color.
Man you guys are quick. The car was repainted in the early 90s, it was originally blue. I think I will strip them, paint the insides black and then see if I like the chrome or painted look better for the surrounding area. Although the correct thing would be to match the paint....
To preserve the chrome below, what would be the best way to strip these things? Some sort of chemical strip?
Go to Home Depot in the paint dept and buy creamy Strip-X...make sure you don't get it on your hands....let the chemical work the use a plastic scrub brush to remove paint peelings and rinse w/fresh water....let dry and repeat process if needed to remove all paint.
Not an acid.....Creamy Strip-X by Kleen Strip is methylene chloride...works great and real easy to use.....brush it on, let it bubble up the paint, scrap off with plastic putty knife/body filler squeegee and repeat until all paint is gone.
You wouldn't believe the party supplies you can get there. :laugh: Actually, I was referring to Phosphoric Acid (from the other thread), and paint stripper, (from this thread). :TU:
Here is a small pic of my old 72 GS conv I did....I also stripped the hood lip molding so the chrome matched the headlight bezels.
I dig the big chrome look. I think I will just leave mine unpainted for the time being. I am still finishing up some trouble areas. The last little bit seems like the is the hardest to remove. It looks like there is some sort of black primer that bonded really well in some spots. The chrome is in really good shape. There are a few pits here and there, but nothing I am worried about, or that you would notice from a few feet away. I promise I will get pics up when they are done! George, do you have any bigger pictures of your 72 GS?
I just used aircraft remover by rust-olium and it worked great to remove the paint from the headlight bezzels
