I want to paint the grill on my 05 Silverado. Can you paint over the plastic / chrome pieces? How do you prep them?

 

The chromed metal needs to be stripped of it's chrome for the paint to stick and look decent. It might look good but only for the first few months. Plastic needs to be prepped and painted and then re-painted after the first coat is done drying about a month or so later. This is according to the guy that painted my front. Didn't end up stripping the chrome because it was too $$ so bought a paintable bumper.

 

I painted the plastic on my grille, but not the chrome. I did this a couple years ago and don't have much experience with paint, so you may want to take this with a grain of salt.

First I scuffed up the plastic a bit with some steel wool/scotch-bright pads. There is a plastic adhesion chemical I was told to spray on before painting so I did that after I scuffed up the plastic. (I can't recall the dry time between coats, but NAPA gave me a sheet with all that info on it.) The plastic adhesion chemical is kind of a primer for plastic. At the time, I was doing this in my parent's garage and didn't have an air compressor, so I used this - http://www.prevalspraygun.com/

The poster above me mentioned repainting after a month. I did not do this, but the paint has held up for the past 5 years, and has seen every type of weather and temps between -20 and 80. It may flake off tomorrow, but has held up so far. I am away from my truck right now, so these are the best pics I have. I first did the bow-tie and grille, but a month later I went back and did the bumpers and mirrors.

 

Where do you get the paintable parts? GM? Can you buy the SS grill already painted?

 

You can probably get a painted grille on ebay.

 

Got my stuff at Stylin concepts and no they didn't come pre painted.

 

Thanks...I'm going to try to do something fast. I am addicted. My truck was all stock until a few weeks ago, when I got the windows tinted.The other night I found this site, and now I have a list about a mile long of things to do to it. What are some other cheap mods that I can do to a 05 Sil. 4.8L? I'm thinking CIA, exhaust, nelson tune, and eventually some headers (once the warranty runs out). Oh, I almost forgot. Today, I added silverstars and the 4 High mod. Looks great. Any help will be greatly appreciated. This website is awesome...

 

underdrive pulleys, stall, gears and a LSD

 

Where can I get underdrive pulleys from? Forgive for being dumb - I am new to this... But what the heck is stall and LSD. Oh yea, what does RCSB mean? Thanks...

 

rcsb mean regular cab short bed

underdrive pulleys can be had from i know of thunder racing and tbyrne

a stall is a torque converter with a higher than stcok stall speed

a LSD is a limited slip differential, most use either the eaton lsd or the detroit trutrac