My Body Shop guy and I took about 200 hours to restore the grille as follows: We took the grille assembly out of the car, along with the grilles on the side of the hood. We slid off the center grille stainless pieces (Two screws on the top short piece). I then began soaking each stainless strip (74 on the front alone) with PB Blaster on the underside and the top where rust had accumulated. I sometimes soaked these overnight. Then, using a knife from underneath the bottom front of the strips, I loosened each strip until I could slide them off from the side. (That part of the process took about 15 to 30 minutes for each of the 74 strips to carefully slide each out without bending them.) After all stainless strips were off the body shop guy carefully hand sanded them all, then primed and painted them with argent color. He could not get a tool between them which is why it was all hand work. In the meantime I made a little jig to hold each strip and polished each with a stainless steel polish from the hardware store. It usually took about 125 "passes" to get each polished nicely. I also kept track of each of the 74 strips since some were a little longer than the others. I had to polish by hand, because a floor buffer would cause them to fly all over the shop. I then dulled the end of each strip I would insert first so I didn't rip up the paint, and carefully slid them in place. But I found they were a little loose from spreading slightly with the knife to take them off. So I carefully bent each tight enough with my finger nail before sliding them on to make a very snug fit with out the use of adhesive. I originally though I could just carefully use pliers to tighten them, but being stainless, they were "springy" and did not fit tightly. Those with slight nicks which we could not buff or file out, were placed as low as possible where they would fit.

That sort of accounts for the 200 hours, but they turned out very nicely.