With the pandemic last year, I randomly started driving my 1986 Buick Grand National for the few times (literally 2-3 times a month) I drove into work. I had such a blast with it that it re-invigorated my love for the car, and wanting me to finally start working on it again, after months if not years of not doing much. I do regret not doing more with it sooner, but with life’s distractions out of the way, I’m a lot more focused than I was.
I tend to forget to share stuff here to track my progress (as slow as it is), but last weekend after a quick wash to get the really-big-chunks off the GN, I lamented over the fact that the bumpers looked as bad as they do. I’ve tried cleaning them in the past, tried pressure washing and other things, and could just never really clean them up.
They were very oxidized, on top of the fading paint and surface rust, so yeah, they looked BAD. So bad that after my first few attempts, I gave up on trying to clean them up, knowing that at some point I’d just pull them and paint or powder coat them (which is still the plan).
Ironically I was cleaning up some electronics stuff on the workbench a couple days before, and remarked how awesome Novus plastic polish is. I use Novus #2 for a lot of things, and tend to try it for new and unusual surfaces, some of which aren’t really plastic. I decided what the heck, they can’t look any worse, let me try a discrete corner and see what would happen (expecting not much to happen).
After trying it on a spot on the back bumper, I was pleasantly surprised that the minute amount of grit in the Novus REALLY cleaned up the bumper, so much so I did a few more test spots, until uhh, I did the entire bumper. Keep in mind, I didn’t expect miracles, and it doesn’t fix aging paint, but it did a great job of cleaning it up, so I decided to try it on the front bumper as well. See the above pic for the “before”, and here’s the “during” after doing the passenger side section:
Notice I did remove the turn signal frame to get underneath; they were pretty rough and in need of paint, so I dug into my parts stash and found some powder coated ones I had bought cheaply due to one having some slight damage. Looking 90% better is better than 0% better I guess lol.
Here’s the final product – a VERY MUCH cleaned up front end, with only a couple rags, a bottle of Novus (maybe half a normal bottle), and a TON of elbow grease. I even did the headlight bezels as well, and again, it worked wonders for them. I’m sure there’s a variety of other automotive products that would have worked, maybe even better, but I’m really happy I finally tried something that worked to get her more dignity.
I’m planning to do some more improvements in the near future, so stay tuned!