Polish or paint the trim?

[JOES66FURY]

polish then clear?

[jcharliem]

Polish. Consider the 'gouges' as badges of courage. Paint will look like...uhh... paint!

[Thumpin455]

Same boat with the 65 trim. Some of it will get replaced because I can get it new, most of it will just get polished. Painting it makes it look like the 80s called and they want their style back. My 79 Formula had trim painted black, I put shiny stuff from another 79 on it instead of painting it black again. Polish it, maybe some clear and let it do what old cars do. Its not a show car is it? Just a driver?

[mike343sharpstick]

I polished all my trim with mothers wheel polish, then waxed it. It looks OK but not perfect. I did fix some deep scratches, but I’m ok with some imperfections. I would never paint stainless trim, I don’t think it would stick long-term.
I recently saw a car where all the trim was lightly scuffed/brushed stainless look or whatever, it looked very good!
That said, all the trim was a consistent sheen which probably took some effort.

[TheSilverBuick]

Like BBM said, life's too short to properly polish this trim, multi-stage super fine sand paper is out, I don't care THAT much about it. Some of it is real rough from years of my abuse. There isn't any real good or dedicated aluminum polishes that I have seen so I three staged three pieces and painted one of those pieces just to see how it would turn out. I hit it with some paint cleaner polish on the bench grinder, then some "chrome" and metal polish on the bench grinder, then follow it up with hand polishing with the metal polishing cotton stuff in the metal can (I forget the name). Some pieces are worse than others, but the polished portion of a piece is noticably shinier than the not touched yet parts. I think I'm going to turtle wax over all of them to psuedo seal them.

[JOES66FURY]

engine turn all of it....

[squirrel]

I think I know the solution. You drive the car everywhere...you have a smartphone...see if you can get Scott to write you an app that will find all the pick-your-part yards within 15 minutes of wherever you are, and stop by every one until you find a complete set of nice used trim

[mrocketscience]

I have a pathological hatred of polishing (maybe because the first 30 years of my life included stainless fab which, by definition, always gets polished?)

I don't like polish, it looks okay for a week then looks like junk because it oxidizes. Add to that, it takes 2 days longer than forever to polish it, and the best part, after about the 6th piece your mind will be wandering and the trim will get sucked out of your hand, the grinder will catch your shirt, suck you into the grinder, then there'll be little bits of highly polished but broken bits of Randal scattered across the room. Then you'll have to go to the hospital to get stitched back together, and you'll meet a cute nurse. The cute nurse will see your underwear, which will not be pristine because of the scattering of Randal. Don't show cute nurses your underwear, Randal, paint.

Showing cute nurses your underwear is a viable option under the right circumstances.

[70chevyC-10]

On that show Fast N Loud - they scotchbrite'd ALL the chrome intentionally to give it a brushed look on a Lincoln, didn't look too bad.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Showing cute nurses your underwear is a viable option under the right circumstances.

there is never a right circumstance if they are heavily stained

[JOES66FURY]

there is never a right circumstance if they are heavily stained

unless they are into that sort of thing, I hear its popular in Germany.

[oldsman496]

those look like window trim pieces for an x-body.... I have both painted and polished my trim at different times.... if you do decide to paint it - ya gotta prep that aluminum to get the paint to stick. I media blasted mine and then put a coat of satin black over it. That seems to have been a good solution for a decent long lasting finish on a daily driven car too....but i like that look.... i think you like the polish look..... and a blue car looks best with shiny trim, fur sure. Polish it Randall. wear gloves when ya do. It'll look fanatastic with fresh paint. take pics

[yellomalibu]

A lot of the trim on my truck looked terrible when I got it. I didn't even polish it - I cleaned it up with 1500 grit and it looks tons better than it did before. The half worn out sandpaper took a long time to cut through the over spray that was on the trim, but it worked.

I voted for polish it, because I've seen enough painted trim with a bunch of chips in it - looks terrible. Have you considered having it chromed or possibly powder coated? Powder coating would scare me a bit because of the build-up possibly interfering with fit - but it is a lot more durable than paint.

[TheSilverBuick]

The cost of chroming/professionally polishing aluminum trim is super expensive and has no guarentee the aluminum will hold the shine or coating. Stainless trim is way nicer, but this car didn't come with that. I haven't priced a powder coating option.

A key thing to point out is I attempted to make the painted version look as close to the polished version as possible, so you know that ideally a clean polished shine is what I want, it's just a matter of using the paint to even out the surface of all the small scratches.

[anotheridiot]

Honestly, its polish and paint.... clear. I dont like the fake chrome paint. Got a metal flake powdercoat that is supposed to be awesome chrome I have yet to try. I have the center post for the hinged part of the hood halves of my 36 that actually still had chrome on parts of it I was gonna try this stuff on just because where the chrome stayed its about .015 higher than the pits, so it all needs to be filled to save it. But my personal taste would be to paint it an accent color to the car so it looks like you did it on purpose, not tried to cover it up. If the chrome powder looks cheap, we will just go black on everything at that point.