It's time for grille-in!

A few weeks ago I pulled the grille on the 280z in order to address some damage.  While I don't know what happened, at some point before I bought the car something hit the the driver's side and mangled the grille as well as breaking the turn signal trim.  You can see that the grille took a beating in the below photos.  You can also see the condition of the paint on the grille: flaking off the aluminum and rust on the steel.

After pulling the upper and lower grilles, I stripped the old paint with a sandblaster and good old fashioned sandpaper.  I then disassembled the upper grille in order to straighten the bent blades.  This was not as easy as I expected due to the rolled edge on each blade, but I kept at it.

Once the blades were straight, I reassembled the upper grille and hit the grilles with several coats of primer.

I then turned my attention to the turn signals.  I knew there would be some work here as the drivers side turn signal (the damaged side) was slightly twisted.  Both signals were a bit dim as well.  Upon removing the lenses, I found the reason why the signals were so dim: the reflector inside the housing had completely rusted, leaving the foil coating barely clinging to the bits of rust.  

After removing the reflector with a Dremel cutting wheel, I used a sheet of aluminum foil folded over many times to create a new reflector.

I had ordered some new lenses and lens gaskets in anticipation of changing them out.  I didn't realize just how much the original lenses degraded over 40 years.  You can't see it in the picture, but the original lens had many "spider" cracks in the plastic.

Now that the turn signals had been addressed, it was time to straighten out the driver's side turn signal mount.  Donning long levers, large pairs of channel locks, and pliers I wrestled the mount into submission and rough alignment with the opposite side.

Once the mount was straight it was time to return my freshly painted grille to its home.  I was excited to see how the car would look with a clean and straight grille.  I wasn't disappointed, either.  I used semi-gloss black which gives the area a nice look.  The turn signals were nice and bright as well!