69 Dart grille repair

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jcmeyer5

jcmeyer5

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working on a 1969 Dart Swinger 340, and the grille needs some help. It isn’t terrible, but over the years it has been bent and some of the vertical segments have broken. I want to get things straightened out, but it is pretty brittle. What are these grilles made of? I would have thought aluminum, but as I said, it’s pretty brittle.
 
They are anodized aluminum, I've saw a lot of different Mopar grilles that are brittle, usually the small bars crack loose. I straightened my 65 belvedere grill and some of the screen part of it broke loose. Here's a grille my brother straightened and repainted the black and you can't tell it was bent. I've used stir sticks and c clamps to straighten them.

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Just be sure not to hammer the dents out if you're trying to save the anodized finish. May sound strange but I have even used a pizza cutter and rolled dents out from the back side of grilles, be careful not to slip and cut yourself. But it has worked for me.
 
So can the aluminum be annealed to allow better shaping? My grand plan is to get everything lined up and braze the vertical bars back in place. Think that’s possible?

I like the way that 68 looks. I know the Swinger 340 grille is supposed to be more aluminum than black, but I might use the GTS paint scheme on ours.
 
I'm not sure how one would react to heat, you could send it to someone who is specialised in aluminium restoration. It would be nice if they reproduced the 69 grille like they do the 68.
 
I had some small welding rods for aluminium and cast that you used with a torch. I bought them from a vendor at Carl Casper's auto show in Louisville Ky. Years ago. I repaired a broken corvette grille with them and they worked great, it was cast aluminum. I can't remember the name of them, the guy was welding aluminum cans together at the show I'd like to find more of these, they worked great on thin aluminum.
 
Mopar-Mitch said:
I had some small welding rods for aluminium and cast that you used with a torch. I bought them from a vendor at Carl Casper's auto show in Louisville Ky. Years ago. I repaired a broken corvette grille with them and they worked great, it was cast aluminum. I can't remember the name of them, the guy was welding aluminum cans together at the show I'd like to find more of these, they worked great on thin aluminum.
Click to expand...
Probably was Muggyweld.
 
Back to this thread. I finally got around to trying to braze this grille. I sanded down to clean metal, and used some aluminum brazing sticks. It didnt work. While I was torching it though, I noticed that it glowed red like steel or copper.. I didnt expect that.

There has to be a way to repair this.
 
I got some Super Alloy 5 Muggy Weld. Complete disaster. The flux was almost impossible to apply without completely melting the rod. At one point the flux began to eat the aluminum. Now I have a 1/4 inch hole to fix, and no f****** idea how to fix it.
 
A somewhat thin 2 part epoxy (applied to the back side with a toothpick) is another option that has been suggested by others, but probably not for a grille with a lot of broken segments. I had considered using it on the original grille of my '68 to fix a few small segment breaks. Luckily I found a nicer grille with only one break. I'll leave it alone for now.
 
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