Re: Glue This, Re-Enforce That

...I had one area that was warped and that was where they made a spot to reach in under the hood to release the hood latch, the material was just to thin. I picked up some 1/2" square plexi glass at the local plexi place friday and made me a re-enforcement for the back of this area after I clamped the grill and used the wife's hair drier as a heat gun to remove as much of the warpage as possible. I glued the piece of plexi glass in with JB Weld. Before gluing the plexi in I used my battery powered Dremil to grove the plexi to make it fit the curve of the back of the grill. Tomorrow I will start to glue in the mounting tabs I made from scratch to mount the headlight door screws which were missing. I also need to make a few re-enforcements in the grill that factory should have put in but didn't. ...

--------> Doc, I a! m looking at the exact same thing on my 69 Javelin grille. On that one, the bottom part is warping very slightly upwards, where some of the tabs broke. I was considering something very much like what you are doing here. Are you talking about 1/2 inch square bar stock, or sheet? Let us know how this fix works out, as I doubt I'm the only Javelin owner with this problem, and grilles for those cars start around 400 for really bad ones. I've seen one guy asking $2,000 for NOS. It's still just a 37 year old piece of plastic. After nearly 40 years of drying out, I bet if you take it out of the box it looks just like mine. I'd love to hear some updates as time goes by if any of this cracks, etc. This grille stuff is a public service, and thank you for it.
mike