Cleaning/Polishing Tailgate Band how to?

[Oliver]

Hi, I guess I'm one of those people who actually like the aluminum tailgate bands that came on a lot of these trucks. The one on my 97' is starting to age and I was wondering what the best things are to use for cleaning or polishing them back up.

 

[Oliver]

Anyone at all?

 

[Ironhead]

I'm another guy who likes the tailgate band, and if I could find a really good one, on a black tailgate, I'd buy it for my truck. I hear that they are difficult to remove from one tailgate to another.

So, there's a bump, although I can't help with the original question.

 

[1500z71]

http://www.gmt400.com/threads/chevrolet-tailgate-trim-piece.32348/

Not exactly what you two are looking for but here's this. LMC recently started reproducing them, GM licensed.

 

[jkeaton]

Yeah, between $300 and $400 for a decal, no thanks. I'm in the same boat, I like mine but it has faded so much the background is white (not sure what the original color was). About the only thing you can do to restore it is sand it and repaint. Whether on the truck or off. Agree with the above, not easy to remove and will probably destroy it in the process. I'm just going to get creative with painters tape, tape the whole thing use an x-acto blade to carefully cut out around the letters to leave the letters covered and repaint it. But I'm just too lazy and I'll live with it. lol

 

[kennythewelder]

After repainting the black, on the letters, I buffed mine out with some polishing compound, then waxed it. This was a few years ago, and it still looks good, but I do wax my truck (banner included) often.

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[chrmaka]

I polished mine to like a chrome finish. Took about 3 days to do so.

Used gel paint stripper to remove the clear coat. lightly scratched at it with 400 grit sandpaper first

then I used meguiars metal polish and a DA polisher and 3" foam pad going from coarse to fine polishes

then I finally finished up with mother's mag and aluminum polish

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[kennythewelder]

I polished mine to like a chrome finish. Took about 3 days to do so.

Used gel paint stripper to remove the clear coat. lightly scratched at it with 400 grit sandpaper first

then I used meguiars metal polish and a DA polisher and 3" foam pad going from coarse to fine polishes

then I finally finished up with mother's mag and aluminum polish

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I was thinking about doing the same thing to mine, stripping off the clear coat. Yours looks great, I'll have to do mine, but you can see mine still looks good.

 

[chrmaka]

it just takes a long time to do. Keep the RPM's down on your polisher though. I etched the aluminum in some places from being too aggressive. I did mine cause mine was faded in spots and only looked good in pictures. but you could see the clear was breaking down.

 

[kennythewelder]

it just takes a long time to do. Keep the RPM's down on your polisher though. I etched the aluminum in some places from being too aggressive. I did mine cause mine was faded in spots and only looked good in pictures. but you could see the clear was breaking down.

Thanks for the info. I'm not sure when I will do mine, but as nice as yours looks, I will do mine sooner or later. I have done my OE aluminum rims some time ago. They came out very nice. As good as they came out, I figured it would work on the tail gate banner. You can see my reflection in the center cap. The Goodyears were about 2 years ago, when I first did them, the pic with the Coopers is about 1 year ago. They still look as good today, but I wax my truck (rims also) about once a month. Once I did the repaint in Oct. 2013, I take very good care of my truck's paint. I have always taken very good care of my truck. You can see my truck in my profile, on my pictures.

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