FL 96 Owner

I searched the forum to see how I could refinish the Bose speaker grills on my 1996 C4 since I am doing a interior refresh (new carpet, sound deadening, new leather with foam for the seats, and new weather stripping for the whole car). No where did I find info on how to refinish the speaker grills so I came up with my own process and thought I would share it.

Once I had the grills removed I decided to use leather, vinyl, and plastic interior dye from Corvette America since I could not find a paint at the local stores that came anywhere near the original interior color (gray).

I tried to find a way to remove the "carpet" from the grill but it is glued to the perforated backing and that is so old and brittle that any attempt to peel the carpet off would certainly lead to failure. So I had to have a way to mask off the carpet without any fear that paint would bleed onto the edge between the carpet and the part I was painting.

I thought about aluminium foil - WAY too thin. Then I tried a piece of the sheet aluminium you get at Home Depot - too thick. So I made my own pieces of thin aluminium by cutting up V8 cans (beer cans would work too). I used tin snips to cut through the top of the can and then a large pair of scissors to cut the strips I needed from the body of the can (be careful - it's thin but still comes up with sharp points):







I needed some "corners" to shield the carpet where it folded over the top and bottom of the grill so I cut and hand folded these:




This is how I installed those:




And where the "interior" corners were I used a piece folded lengthwise and then carefully pushed it under the strip that runs across the grill (the one that has the Bose Gold logo piece on it):




Then I carefully shoved the aluminium strips under the strip mentioned above and folded pieces to fit in all the rest of the cracks between the carpet and the plastic. Note how tight the aluminum is to the plastic and notice the toothpick - more on that later:



Here is what a grill looks like after all the aluminum was put in place, blue painter tape put on to cover other areas, and finally a layer of plastic bag to shield the rest of the part in preparation for painting. You can see that I inserted toothpick to hold the metal masking away from the plastic. Those stayed in place overnight since I ran out of time and the next day when I did the painting I removed all of them and the spacing held well enough that the spray paint could sneak around the corner and completely cover the plastic but not enough to soak into the edge of the carpet. At the blue arrow you can see the black surface marks I was trying to cover and at the yellow arrow the sun faded plastic that looked terrible:




Now on to painting. I failed to mention that I had washed the grills (keeping the carpet dry) really well before I started all this but that didn't remove anything I was trying to cover up. So I masked the grills as shown above and then wiped them down first with mineral spirits. I also used Corvette America's Interior Dye Surface Prep - in retrospect mineral spirits may have been enough and saved me twenty bucks. After cleaning the parts and insuring that my masking was still firmly in place I sprayed them with an overcoat of Interior Dye Adhesion Promoter and when it got tacky I painted them with about four light coats of Gray Aerosol Interior Dye. I let that dry overnight and the next day did another two light coats of the dye with some minor touch ups where there were still issues. This is the finished product:




And some closeups as I removed the masking:







And two more images showing the final product:







All in all I am very happy with the results. While I was at it I removed all the other gray plastic parts in the car and cleaned and painted them too since I wanted everything to have the identical color and finish. I hope this helps you if you want to refinish your speaker grills.

MaxDaemon

Very nice!

I had planned on just replacing my scratched up, faded, black speaker grills, as they make yours look like new! However, now that I've seen this thread, I think I'll give it a try saving them. Worst case, they can't be much worse than they are now!

FWC

Nice work. I actually peeled the carpet right off, doesn't look bad and at least in my mind anyway it gives better sound.

Goldcylon

Looks good