I've been working on painting my '72 F100 one panel at a time and I'm at the tailgate. It has the trim piece that says FORD on it and I don't want to paint around it. To be honest depending on how it looks under it I may paint the FORD letter on the tailgate itself to match the roof color, but that's not important. I don't want to tear anything up getting it off so how's this done? Thanks!

 

I removed this piece not too long ago on my truck.

I believe that the only way to get the rear piece off is to grind the rivets off from the inside of the tailgate.

Good luck.

 

Not cool. Maybe I will just tape... blah.

 

bolivartech,

I ground the rivets off from the inside with some careful grinder work. You could probably drill them out (carefully) also.

When it comes time to reinstall, I will probably invest in a nice riveter, although I suppose one might be able to come up with some way to screw it back on.

 

How did you get to the rivets? Did you have to dismantle your tailgate?

 

My tailgate trim piece was riveted all the way thru to to inside of the tailgate.

By inside, I mean the sheetmetal facing the inside of the box - not internal to the tailgate.

In other words, you don't have to do anything other that open your tailgate to access the head of the rivet or you could grind them off with the tailgate up while sitting inside the bed.

Now, that being said, there are a couple of different styles of tailgate trim. Yours may not be like mine.

Here is a picture that may help show the pop rivets I'm talking about: