After pulling the trim, I pulled tail lights, headlights, front header panel, trunk deck, and the front bumper. I Bought a house with a 2 car garage, went on a Virgin Island vacation, and rebuilt a 99 2wd blazer using all 2003 2wd blazer parts. Needless to say I was a bit distracted from this project and didn’t get many pictures of the evolution of the removed parts and the clean up process. When things settled back down, we decided to try to make it to the last (or so we thought) Springfield, Missouri Street Machine Nationals that fall to meet up with family and friends and show them my new toy. We made it and the car looked a little different then the pictures I sent out previously. Here is how I did it in very minimal time…
First, the exterior window trim was bead blasted, cleaned, sprayed with adhesive promoter, and coated with several coats of Dupli-color Trim Paint (Part # TP70) to create the black out trim package look (Buick Grand National style). I did not remove the opera windows, simply scuffed, masked and painted for a temporary black out on those as well using the same paint. (I have many parts that I plan on using for the final product, and OEM Grand National opera windows are one of them (ebay $60), so at this time I chose not to remove the opera window.) The headlight bezels were bead blasted and painted also. (More OEM parts available for final build).
I had a spare 87 header panel, and so I filled the hood ornament hole with bondo, smoothed it out, and prepped it for paint. (again I also have a OEM Grand National header panel that will be used on the final build up) The grille was a GN part that had a light scorching from a turbo fire and was acquired on ebay for $50 (yet again more parts are available for later)
Lastly, the front and rear bumper fillers were replaced and painted to match. Believe it or not, but I found both rear fillers in a couple of junk yards!
I know there are a lot of you out there that probably wouldn’t have wasted the time or $$$ but I sprayed rattle can flat black on the car just for the car show. In fact it was still out gassing when we were there and people remarked that they could still smell it! haha! But we were there and had a great time at this car’s first car show!
This quick change took about 2 weeks of labor after work in my garage.
