'56 Packard taillights, bad chrome, what to do?

[Nads]

So the '54's blown apart. My '56 Packard tailight housings are in poor shape. One of them was broken in two where the backup light junction is, this is due to some asshole backing into me in a parking lot and driving off. I PC7d it back together, it came out great. I don't have the dough to have them rechromed, I'm sure it would cost plenty.
I was thinking about sanding and grinding off the chrome then painting them silver metalflake.
I tried to do a bumper chrome paint and craft store glitter sprinkling experiment on them today. The results were less than pleasing. But I think if done right with sprayed on flake they would look pretty good.
I just wanna run these until I can find a better set for a decent price. The bastards are like $500-600 a pair these days.
What have you cheap assholes done in the past to salvage crummy pieces of brightwork?

BTW, I also took 980lbs of stinking maggot infested garbage to the dump today, and I'm the boss at work. Imagine the humility I would suffer if I was a peon?
It was less fun than getting a hummer from Bea Arthur, but more fun than having to perform oral sex on Rosie 'O' Donnel.

[shoebox72]

Keep frequenting the mall, err, dump. They may show up there someday. You know you have that kind of luck.

Billy

[praisethelowered]

Nads-

I am currently trying to cheaply restore some potmetal trim. I sanded off the chrome and polished a little bit last week and it looked great- as a test I then set it back outside. There are now spots where the pits were so maybe I didn't go deep enough - i'll try again soon but maybe you should consider polishing them. My parts seem to polish up just like aluminum does.

[Nads]

PTL, the stuff does shine up really well. The only problem is the break in one tailight. I tried using that low temp solder stuff they sell at swap meets on a horn ring a while back with no success. Maybe it was just me, but the pot metal just turned to goo even under the heat of a propane torch.
The housing really aren't pitted that deeply, they're definitely salvageable, but I'm incompetent.

[40StudeDude]

Nads...Got any powdercoating places/outfits down there??? There is a "color" they use called Near Chrome...it's obviously silver and they powdercoat it clear to give it a shine...from ten feet it looks like chrome...and it's a cheap alternative to real chrome...

Anything metal can be powdercoated and there is a couple of different "bondo's" that will hold the heat it takes to powdercoat something (altho I don't remember the names of them rite now...a powdercoat place can give you directions on that...

I had an intake manifold done this way and you cannot tell it's not chrome...there are PC places that advertise in the rod mags...check it out...
R-

[voodoo]

Nads there is a pair of taillights in Tampa that will never be used or even missed. We could do the swap in minutes. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif There is a good powder coat shop over here. The # is 813-963-7453.