Wisdom prevails with the E-Type's chrome
I was wrong. In so many ways, I was wrong. There, I feel better already but this therapy session has to continue.
Which car am I referring to? Any of the twenty or so Citroens I have owned over the forty – no, aaaaagh, how awkward, make that fifty – years of driving? The multiple Peugeots… several 203s, multiple 404s, my Dad’s hand-me-down 504 even an unbelievably unreliable and thirsty V6 604? The Bristol 401, MG TC, a Mercedes W123 wagon, two BMW E9 CSi, a few Jaguars, an Alfa Kamm tail spider or even the quirky plastic Daimler ‘Dart’ – the SP250 with a magnificent V8 engine perched inside a body that made Quasimodo look well proportioned?
Sadly, it could pretty much be any or all of the above. I have been wrong more often than right in my pathetic misguided attempts at mechanical competence.
Why do I persist? Most weekends I am astonished that I emerge from the shed with all my digits still attached, with only an occasional blood trail following me along the path as I nurse my injury towards the first aid kit in the house. Stanley the knife can do that to you.
The latest crisis is triggered yet again by last year’s electrical fire behind the dashboard of my E-type Jaguar. Regular readers – both of you – will be familiar with multiple articles chronicling the fallout and damage arising from a short circuit inside the headlight switch. Molten plastic dripped down the inside of the instrument panel, igniting the fifty-year-old dried-out hessian lining of the radio binnacle, sending flames up through the dashboard and into the demisting vents and beyond. The chemical fire extinguisher that successfully killed the flames itself created a problem – to stop endless and incurable corrosion, all traces of extinguisher powder must be completely eradicated from every surface of the car or in time it simply eats my E-type from the inside.
So now my car is stripped for a total repaint, inside and out, The entire interior has been removed and all pre-existing rust in the floor, bulkhead, driver’s sill, driver’s door skin and the windscreen pillars have all been thoroughly repaired. The team at Historic & Vintage Restorations are slowly setting right the fifty years of crashes, corrosion and plain neglect.
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A month ago, as the bills for the repairs singed my eyebrows as much as the fire did, I thought I could save some money by polishing the multiple chrome components myself. How hard can it be? Buy some commercial polish, several tubes of Autosol, 000-grade steel wool, some dental picks for the corners and crevices, and several filthy weekends. Off to work we go!
The bulk of the chrome responded to gentle persuasion, and now the window frames, body trims, rear hatch latch and hinges, sunroof frame, headlight rims and eyebrows – almost all the major plated pieces gleamed and looked fabulous. I felt virtuous and involved, finding something useful to do in the restoration instead of just paying the bills.
But when the visually most important components got their turn, I discovered that just like a teenager, chrome gets acne. Hoping to avoid very expensive replacement bumper bars front and rear – around $5000 all up – I started out trying to save them, masking up the chrome with great care to protect what I hoped could be resurrected.
The next step was to attack all the inside surfaces with various configurations of wire brush, then the Dremel to get into the crevices, then a drenching in de-rusting liquid, then sanding, then a rattle can of silver paint. When all that was finished – days of work – I removed the masking tape from the outside surfaces and started trying to polish up the chrome. Then, and only then did I discover all my weekends of work were wasted as the bumpers would never meet even my low standards.
In places, the little craters of pitting had gone through to the metal below and in one spot the chrome was peeling. Even though that was underneath an over-rider, it was a warning sign that this was a false economy.
So the chrome platers were called, and called, and called. The first business, highly recommended by lots of old car people, cheerfully asked me if I was seated before telling me without the slightest hint of regret that his turnaround time for re-plating car bumpers was… eight months! Clearly he does not want to do this type of work.
After letting my fingers do the walking, I found a local plater who has promised to attend to my bumpers in one month, not eight.
Similarly, the door handles are too pitted and are being replaced with new ones. But everything else has been saved ad can go back onto the car.
And I am relieved. It was foolish to think I could get away without replating. After all, what would be the point of repainting the entire car, replacing all the rubbers and putting sub-standard chrome bumpers and door handles back on? The bumper bars are the first thing anyone notices, along with chrome wire wheels [which have to be replaced], so they simply cannot carry any blemishes at all.
What was I thinking?
From Unique Cars #471, Oct/Nov 2022