NitroPlate: Another Great Experience

The Bullitt has been a great car, and I've really enjoyed driving it. Probably the only area that needed a little aesthetic attention was the headers and h-pipe. When one of the headers and the h-pipe each developed a crack that needed welding off the car, I had a chance to enlist NitroPlate to refinish the headers. I tried to clean up and refinish the h-pipe myself.

Before: Yikes! Too ugly for the Bullitt. But they are JBA mid-lengths—so they are very good quality overall with a thick flange.

After: I'm digging the bling factor—not to mention the increased heat retention. The service to bead blast, bake-to-clean, and ceramic coat was $200. Shipping is tough at $80 round trip (and only NC to TN!), but NitroPlate can't help that.

The JBA h-pipe and SLP converters couldn't be NitroPlated (the extreme heat in the process would ruin the converters), so I cleaned the pipes by hand, and painted them with black exhaust paint. Not sure it will hold up, but they looked pretty good at that moment. :)

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Trunk Weatherstripping: Save a Few Bucks?

Here's a quick post about another "re-do" that cost me some time and a little money.

There are some threads online about replacement weatherstripping not allowing the trunk lid to close fully. I also had bought the "cheaper" weatherstrip a few years ago when my car was coming back from the paint shop. After I installed the weatherstrip, the trunk lid never sat properly and no amount of fiddling with the trunk lid helped. Some folks suggested giving it some time to settle. Nope.

Years later I decided to buy the better weatherstrip and do the job right. I'm actually surprised the larger mail order places even sell the cheap weatherstrip. If it doesn't allow the trunk lid to lay down properly, the weatherstrip is not fit for its intended purpose. Don't sell it.

Here are the two weatherstrip offerings from NPD. The better one on the left. El cheapo on the right (aged on the car a few years). The price has continued to drop since I bought mine in 2008. My suggestion is to avoid the headache and buy the better weatherstripping.

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Back in Black

Recently, I decided to change up the appearance of the '66. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it though. I wanted to do some side stripes and wanted to change the look of the wheels. Ultimately, I added vinyl black side stripes and painted the wheel centers gloss black.

For the stripes I went with side stripes for a '67-'68. I wanted taller stripes and not the thinner GT-style stripes from '65-'66. I bought these from one of the mail order places for only $20. When I installed them I didn't wrap them around the edges of the panels, trimming them about 1/8" away instead. On the front fenders, I trimmed the stripe at the beginning of the wheel arch rather than up to the edge of the wheelwell itself.

To paint the wheels I bought a can of Rustoleum gloss black paint (to supplement a partial can I had on hand.) My Vintage Wheel Works wheels have coarse aluminum centers, but I had already added some silver paint a few years ago, since they had taken on a gold-tone over the years.

Ready for paint: I bagged each wheel and covered each lug hole with a coin. When taping the wheels I simply trimmed the edges with the edge of a razor blade—and did not have to follow the circular edges with dozens of pieces of tape around the wheel.

Side 2: In addition to cleaning the wheel before paint, I used a red Scotchbrite pad to scuff the surface to allow the new paint to adhere properly.

Three coats later...

Ready for the car...

Black stripes and black wheels installed. :)

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