I need to take off all the door moldings, skirt moldings and bumper covers. What am I in for? It appears as if the door moldings are a simple putty-knife removal, the skirts are screws and putty knife and the front bumper appears to be rivetted...I haven't looked at the back bumper cover yet. Also, can these parts be sanded, especially the door moldings? The paint is peeling and they need to be prepped well for the new coat of paint....
Any insight would be much appreciated....
A long afternoon of removing nuts and screws, thinking you got them all, then finding out that there's one more you missed. I just completed this task on a 1987 GT, which is probably the exact same procedure, and it took me a while to find all the different little bits holding things on. A pneumatic ratchet helps immensely... a small 1/4" ratchet helps a lot too, since there's a lot of tight spaces involved.
The door trim is just stuck on with foam tape, but be careful peeling it off... there's a thin metal strip that runs the length of the thing, and if you pull the trim too far back when peeling it off you'll bend the metal and the trim won't sit straight anymore without some coaxing. Best way to get it off without any damage is to take a double edged razor blade (not the single edged, as they're too thick) and CAREFULLY slice at the tape as you peel off the trim. Do the top strip first, then lever the whole thing away and slice at the bottom tape. That way you aren't bending the trim in a direction that will cause the metal in it to deform. It's tedious as hell, that's for sure. If you aren't planning on keeping the trim intact, then just peel the crap off. A heat gun helps to soften the tape.
The skirts are not held on by any sort of adhesive. They are held on by a series of screws, as well as being attached by a metal clip that is riveted to the body. There's a lip on the part that fits in between the clip and the body. Start with the skirt below the door, it's the easiest of the three and it'll give you a feel for how the clips work. Remove all the screws, then pull the skirt out and up. Then start working at one side and pull the skirt away from the clip. I used a flathead screwdriver to help pry it out, but I don't think it's necessary. For the front and rear skirts, there's both a horizontal and a vertical clip. Once you do the middle piece and see how the clip works, it should be enough to give you an idea how to remove the other pieces. I found it possible to be fairly rough with the parts when removing them without causing any damage.
The back bumper cover has a series of threaded protrusions that stick into the body and are held on by nuts. There are also some plastic body trim retainers at the bottom of the skirt as well. You can pop the body trim retainers loose from underneath the car, but the nuts have to be removed from the inside. You need to take off the interior trim where it runs around the rear of the trunk/hatch, sort of like if you were going in to replace the bulbs in the tail lights. You may also need to remove the tail light assemblies, I can't remember for sure. But you definitely need nimble hands to reach all the nuts as they're down around some fairly tight corners.
The front bumper cover is, as you said, held on by rivets. There are a few bolts holding it on as well. I believe you need to remove the headlights to get at all the rivets if you're planning on drilling them out. I found it was actually easier to remove the bumper and the cover as one whole assembly, since then you don't need to drill any rivets at all, and you could presumably still paint the thing without any added difficulty. If you decide to drill the rivets out, replacement rivets can be purchased from autobodytoolmart.com in addition to all the odd little trim retainers and whatnot that will inevitably get lost or broken during the procedure. I believe those rivets are of the 1/4" variety... which means you need a pretty big rivet gun to install them. My personal preference is for the "aircraft pneumatic rivet gun" from Harbor Freight, as it's cheap (compared to other pneumatic rivet guns, at least) and it'll do 1/4" rivets. Otherwise you'll have to get a large lever action manual rivet gun. Harbor Freight sells one of those as well, but speaking from personal experience with said device, it sucks big time. It's also an order of magnitude cheaper than the ones sold through more respectable tool suppliers, but in this case you truly do get what you pay for.
I'm afraid I have no answer to that one... from handling the parts, I'd guess that the skirts and bumper covers could be sanded but the door moulding doesn't feel like something that'd take too well to sanding. It's awfully rubbery, whereas the other parts are more firm. It seems like there must be some kind of refinishing option for the things, though. Might be best to check around with some folks who have a strong background in auto body work in case there's some kind of trick it requires to get a good finish on the things.
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