I needed to clean up some original Ford letters, emblems as Ford describes them, specifically the letters used on 65 and 66 GT fenders, the M U S T A N G. There are 7 letters required on each fender, 14 total, and I did not want to handle each one multiple times, applying polish, removing polish, etc, so I figured out a way to do it in bulk.
Here’s the procedure I came up with. After a cycle in the dishwasher to get the dirt off, I used a Styrofoam packing tray from my local supermarket, the type used for meat, to hold the letters by pushing in the pins. This is a closed cell type of Styrofoam and extra polish (or any liquid) won’t get absorbed into it.
Pic 1. The letters pushed into the Styrofoam.
Pic 2. The crud built-up on the bottom of the letters.
Pic 3. The tray, letters, a toothbrush and some chrome polish in a cut down 3 ounce paper drinking cup. Some polish, some scrubbing and presto, clean letters.
Pic 4. To polish, I used a shop towel for the open letters, M U S T N and G. For the closed letter A and the tight edges of some of the other letters, like the G, some cotton string, doubled up several times and twisted, and then while watching TV, polished away.
Pic 5. The finished letters from the top on another piece of Styrofoam, an open cell type.
Pic 6. The finished letters from the side.
Pic 7. A close-up of the bottoms pits exposed, but no crud.
I found one letter had a flaw on the top that appeared after polishing so I used my Dremel tool with a soft brush on a replacement letter. It took a lot more time.
The use of a meat tray made it a lot easier to handle and inspect, and should work on any emblems or letters with pins.
Jim
