DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Hi,

Good engine lid grills are becoming hard to find so I decided to test restoring them. Here are the results.

Firstly I had to carefully remove each bar from the grill and then have each individual bar polished (and re-anodised if required). Here are the bars after polishing.



As expected during transport, polishing and (if required) anodising, these bars are very easily bent and twisted. Each bar therefore required work. Also the polishing removes the numbers which are stamped on each bar. I thus used a spare grill to match the location of each bar on the grill.



In the mean time the grill is prepped and painted



Each bar is then individually added and adjusted to match to the correct curve and spacing between each bar. This is a time consuming process but the results I think are worth it.



I need another half hour tomorrow making some more adjustments but considering this grill was awful I am pretty happy with the results, or maybe I am being to anal



Thanks
Any feedback or comments would be much appreciated.
Alan

Another fine job there Alan you have a knack of making these thing look easy

I agree it's no 5 min job, I got part way through doing one but the quotes I was getting for polishing/re-anodizing or chroming of the strips were more vs. the cost of a good used grill, so my project's been put on hold for now.

Thanks Darren.

Alan

there you go again look you making everyone else look slow

I'm looking forward to stripping my car under your guidance, I just hope i can keep up your high standards. I fear my learning may not be a curve but more a Himalayan ascent

PS How are wedding plans

regards

Mike

Hi Mike,

Wedding plans are going well, we have several meetings with caterers today...
....but the bigger question is will I have my 3.2 twin plugged by then as we are going to use it as the wedding car

Speak soon

Alan

Alan.UK wrote:Hi Mike,

Wedding plans are going well, we have several meetings with caterers today...
....but the bigger question is will I have my 3.2 twin plugged by then as we are going to use it as the wedding car

Speak soon

Alan

Check out your insurance very carefully for this Alan. I know someone who came a cropper using their pride and joy as a wedding car. Wouldn't like it to spoil your day.

Regards
Mike

Alan,
Grill looks fab - you must stop doing these restoration threads otherwise you'll have a customer for life.............!!
Regards
Stuart

i have never worked out how to take these apart as all the ones i have had the pleasure of removing and cleaning have been rivetted togeather.

how you do it?

bugger it now I have to do another job..

It's been on my list for a while. I pull part of a spare one apart and straightened it out alot..

Alan your a bad influence on us lot..

I was even out in the workshop today and completed a steering rack ( bar on bit see wanted section ) all stripped cleaned and painted in a day.. what's going on.. I seem to have caught the Alan bug and get this done.. hey not a bad thing..

Looks brilliant Alan, Impressive how you got the bars to all lign up correctly.

edwardo wrote:Looks brilliant Alan, Impressive how you got the bars to all lign up correctly.

think this picture answers your question.

and it helps that the bars are numbered.

but i still don't know how to get the grill apart without damaging it then fix it back togeather again.all the ones i have worked on have been rivetted

Hi,

The early SWB grills are different, so maybe that is what you mean, but they can still be taken apart.
The grills are numbered but the polishing process removes these so in this case they were manually identified on where they go.

I also manually adjusted each bar to make them straight and also with the correct curve. To see how badly they were messed up look at the bars at the top of the previous photo. I have a few tricks to achieve this, but the best is patience and time.

Alan

Hi Alan

I am just in the middle of cleaning up a short wheel base grill, what rivets do you use to rebuild the grill, as I can not imagine the original one are still available.

Kind regards

Hi John,

I will need to take a look to remind myself what I use.

Alan

Hi Guys

Thanks for the info, can anyone recommed someone for polishing/anodising them.?? What do you use for straightening the bars, by eye or jig .

thanks again

nick

p.s. are the rivets 'blind rivets' ???