Make sure you know if your trim is chrome, stainless steel, or aluminum. Typically, while your car is getting its body and paint done, you can work on your trim. When you’re ready to restore your trim, it’s a satisfying job. Talk to your local body shop and see if they have extras of these tubes you can purchase or scavenge. Not coincidentally, that’s how trim is generally shipped. I like to use long cardboard tubes with plugs in the ends. You need to store it, potentially for a long time, and lots of trim gets ruined after being strapped together with tape and tossed onto a shelf. When you get the trim loose, you’re not out of the woods yet. Every clip has a proper method, and the key is to find the one that works for your car. If you’ve got any trim already off the car, examine it closely and try to figure out where to push, pull, pry, or poke to release the clip harmlessly. Even between two clips of the same design, one could be loose and half-broken already while the other one is tightly wedged into place. Work slowly, with plenty of time available to consider each trim clip individually. In any case, the key word to remember is careful. Plastic and steel tools designed explicitly for removing trim are indepensive (see the ads on this page). If you do it yourself, be sure to use the right tools. It might hurt a little to pay for such a simple task, but $50 to have the trim removed intact is better than hundreds to buy replacements for your twisted mess of formerly decent chrome! CLIPHOUSE BODY FASTENERS PROFESSIONALSecondly, you can take the job to a professional and pay to have it done. No matter how rare your car, you’re not likely to be the first person to face this challenge. When that happens, your first course of action is research and advice-talk to your club and search the Internet for tips and tricks for your particular car. It’s not just about getting paint up under the trim-you won’t be able to get that piece media blasted or dipped with that trim still attached! But automakers have used as many different methods to attach trim as there are stars in the sky, and sooner or later, you’re going to find yourself facing down a piece of perfect, irreplaceable trim that has to come off in order to do a good job on your paint and bodywork. If you’re restoring a domestic car from the 1950s or later, chances are you can pick up a trim removal tool at the auto parts store. Almost as bad, you may damage otherwise good trim clips. You might bend it, rip it, dent it, or scratch it if you do that. You have to remove it eventually, but don’t dive in with a screwdriver or pry bar and just yank it off.
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