Straightening Rear Deck Grill Slates

[motortownmatt]

Good Evening All,

I recently purchased an early style rear deck grill off of EBay (pre 68 - thin slates with 6 retaining rods). It was painted all black but has cleaned up nicely after stripping. Like the majority of early 911 deck grills, a heavy hand had been applied to the grill sometime in its life and mildly bent some of the slates (really not that bad as compared to some). Is there a proven technique that I can use to straighten the slates? Currently the grill is apart. Should I reassemble and attempt to straighten it by hand? It’s a slippery slope when trying to straighten these things as they can come out looking worse after a straightening job.

Many Thanks,
matt

[Paul Schooley]

I sorta reformed mine by hand right on the decklid. To say it's difficult would be an understatement. Those dang things are easy to bend incorrectly. I can't see that a jig of sorts would work either. It's just one of those deals where you go very slowly and make very small adjustments until it looks fairly uniform. I'm still not 100% satisfied with mine but it looks fairly good. Best of luck with your endeavour.

[Eric911S]

Hello: I made a 2x4 block with two slots cut in it to straighten the pieces. The one slot is for the narrow profile and the other for the wider profile. This gets the pieces straight and makes them all uniform. Once on the car the final tuning was done. Hope this helps. Thanks Eric

[70SATMan]

I sorta reformed mine by hand right on the decklid.

I agree. The deck lid is the best jig you are going to find to keep the general shape while tweeking. I wouldn't attempt it on an alum. lid though.

[tom dance]

I've done these just by hand and looking at it. I'd bend the horizontal first as that is the easiest. Then work on the up and down bumps. The aluminum is not that hard to bend. Don't worry too much about being perfect. Remember you can see a whole lot more defects when you can pick it up and turn it around. On a car you'd never see them. You'd be surprised to see how many grills on a car are bent if you took them off and really examined them.
Tom

[motortownmatt]

Thanks for the responses guys. The 2x4 trick sounds novel; I might attempt it. As soon as I finish up the restoration I'll post pics to get some feedback on my technique.

Cheers,
matt

[motortownmatt]

Good Election Evening Guys and Gals,

Well Generous Motors gave me the day off to exercise my right of suffrage. (In Michigan, IMO, "the" election came down to the picking the lesser of two evils). In addition to voting and taking care of some errands I finished up the restoration of my above mentioned deck grill. Pre and post restoration pics are attached.

I think the results came out fairly nicely; about the best I was hoping for. Today I separated the upper and lower support slates that hold the spread sheet metal mesh, stripped those parts, painted the wire mesh, and reassembled the whole assembly. In lu of having nice two-part compression rivets I resorted to using Home Depot grade pop rivets. I reassembled the upper and lower support slates with spacer washers to prevent the pop riveted assembling from bending my nice freshly straightened slates (I ended up straightening each one by hand and eying it length wise (not unlike sorting lumber) to insure that it was straight, waiting until after assembly for any final tweeking.

I took numerous pics before disassembly to ensure that I assembled the slates in to correct order to get the proper outer parameter contour. Upon stripping and buffing the slates I noticed that that each one was number to insure, mindless, proper reassembly. Upon noticing these numbers I thought to myself, “…here’s another classic german engineering touch”. I had to fabricate two new struts from some metric threaded rod as I sheared two of the original, and corroded, aluminum struts during disassembly. Other than purchasing another 4mm acorn nut to replace one I lost; it’s done.

All and all, not too shabby for a $60 Ebay purchase. Let’s see if it fits my ’68 deck lid.

Thanks again for your comments,
matt

[motortownmatt]

additional pic attached.......................................... ......

[Paul Schooley]

Looks great to me. Nice work.

[911scfanatic]

FWIW, my 70/71 grill bars are numbered so you can't screw up reassembly. The numbers are very small so you really have to look for them. Maybe yours are numbered as well?