SusieQ's 68 Mustang Convertible: Tail Light Recovery

Finally got back around to those tail lights buckets that I managed to mangle last month in a fit of impatience. I'm blaming it on cabin-fever and the need to see sunshine again :/ Anyway, during the cooling off period, I went ahead and purchased a set of the satin-finished tail light bezels from Scott Drake.I would have rather de-chromed the originals and powder coated a matte-silver - but de-chroming stuff is such an environmental disaster if you do it at home - and expensive if you send it out. The Drake option seemed the best choice as I was looking for a little less chrome to start with.

Once the bezels arrived, I used them as the color template for picking a powder that would match them. The intent being to strip the chrome trim that attaches to the rear 1/4 caps and deck lid and powder coat in a color to match the bezels. I've read that these pieces are stainless but I'm pretty sure they are just anodized aluminum. Being such, I decided to try the oven-cleaner trick to remove the anodizing prior to powder coating. Surprisingly, it worked fairly efficiently. I placed them in a shallow tray and just kept them 'wet' with the cleaner for approximately an evening of shop time. You could literally see the anodizing sloughing off the pieces. Once I got the anodizing off, I took them to the weld table and VERY carefully tapped a few nicks/bumps out of them using a small hammer and various small round pieces of scrap metal. A quick trip to the blast cabinet and they were ready for powder coating. I ended up sending to Prismatic Powders for 5 different color samples, and the one that seemed the closest was Silver Satin. So I ordered a pound of that and a pound of Casper Clear (Sven recommended) to topcoat with.

While waiting for the powder to arrive, I sucked it up and went after the buckets. First step was chemically stripping as much of the damaged powder coat off as I could. Took three applications to finally get to a point where I could finish them in the blast cabinet. Even then, it was a long hour for each one. That powder coat is TOUGH stuff!!! I took my time this go-around - did the proper surface prep - set the oven for 400 deg and let 'er rip. Happily there were no surprises when I popped the oven door this time. Beautiful, mirrored surface like I was looking for the first time. Lesson learned...