Hey guys and gals,

I just baught my 81 elky!! take a look http://elcaminocentral.com/users/bigsteves81/
Anyway. I am looking to take most of the trim off of it as I have seen in many pictures.
This is my first project car and there is still alot I do not know. I hope to learn quickly and this summer fix my elky up to the point that it looks really good. My first task is to remove all this chrome trim. I like the look of it all smooth and gone. So here are my two questions for this post.

The trim on the doors. This does not want to come off it seems, I thought it might be attached by clips but I heard from someone else that it is actualy fastened on from the other side of the door. Is this true? I would like to know BEFORE I take the doors apart. How would I go about taking it off?
Second, the trim over the bed, when I started to remove this I found that it was not straight forward as I would have thought. I figured I would take it off, and then paint it but come to find out under the trim it was pretty ugly...the body does not seem to be attached to the other parts as I had hoped ... how do most people get by this? should I use filler? or is there a trick to this? I do not know how to explain it really well. under this chrome like trim is the body panel that you can see, and then like the steel part of the bed, but they are seperated greatly... I do not want to allow water to get between there and set. Perhaps someone has a good idea for this?
Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreaciated.

If your talking about the aftermarket strip on that picture, its probably held on by adhesive.

Yeah, that strip came right off.... and on the passanger side I found rust ... lol But what I mean is the trim on the bed... underneath is seperations between the tailgate skin and bed...etc. I have seen elcamino's that are totaly stripped of all chrome. How do they do that?

i've never seen that.. although you could just paint it

...what I mean is the trim on the bed... underneath is seperations between the tailgate skin and bed...etc. I have seen elcamino's that are totaly stripped of all chrome. How do they do that?

I've seen a few without the bed trim and they do look cool.

The bed and tailgate chrome is held on by plastic clips. Plus the tailgate trim has four screws. You need a special trim removal tool to release the clips and even with the tool some of the clips will break. Without the bed trim it's not very pretty so if you want to do away with the trim altogether you'll have to do some magic with a MIG welder and filler material (bondo).

:mrgreen:

Remove the chrome trim? OMG NOOOOO! Actually thought about doing this also. Saw a guy selling his car on Ebay about 2 months ago that had done this. Contacted him and asked him how he had done it. He had a professional do it who used metal MIG welded, and then used fiberglass to finish it off, also molded the tailgate closed, if your going to do it have a pro do it or it could cost even more in the long run to fix it if it doesn't turn out right. Maybe if you media blasted the trim, primed with a good 2 part epoxy primer and then painted to match the car that might give you a similar effect for a lot less. And if you don't like it, it would be easy to change it back.