I got sick of looking at my '96's mismatched front grill trim pieces from a chrome side marker, chrome headlight, gold grill, chrome headlight, then gold side marker. I was going to paint it all black, but I realized the gold trim was applied over a stock chrome finish. I figured, I had to sand this grill anyway if I was going to paint it, but I quickly realized the gold comes off very easily with 400 grit sand paper. I did the center grill section and side marker light in about 20 minutes. The pictures show it after the 400 grit, and I have not sanded with anything finer yet or buffed. I am not sure how thick the chrome finish is, but I did not even come close to sanding through it. For those of you with gold bling, you may want to try this. In the pictures, the passenger side of the grill has been sanded, and the driver's side has not. The divider between the chrome/gold is above/below the Toyota emblem.
With just 400 grit, I would say there's about a 10% haze difference vs. the original chrome pieces, so the difference as-is is minimal. I could go further with 1000-1500 grit sand paper and buff with scratch remover, but right now I don't feel like it! This techinique is basically the same thing used for automotive paintwork called color sanding. On my website I show more details using a scuba gauge face (plastic) to remove scratches etc:
http://www.geocities.com/toyotashawn/colorsanding.html
With just 400 grit, I would say there's about a 10% haze difference vs. the original chrome pieces, so the difference as-is is minimal. I could go further with 1000-1500 grit sand paper and buff with scratch remover, but right now I don't feel like it! This techinique is basically the same thing used for automotive paintwork called color sanding. On my website I show more details using a scuba gauge face (plastic) to remove scratches etc:
http://www.geocities.com/toyotashawn/colorsanding.html
