Blacked-Out B-Pillar

Check this out, an early 1990-vintage Roadmaster Wagon brochure. GM did not black out the B-pillar on production Roadmaster wagons, but as this pre-production brochure shows, that WAS the original plan! I blacked out my B-pillar about two years ago...and now I find this! Cool! Ha!

Brochure



GM Design Clay Model (thanks Chris!)



And my '96 Roady




-Mike

Interesting find. Mike what did you use to black yours out with? Did you do a write up on that?

Big Wagon Guy wrote:

Interesting find. Mike what did you use to black yours out with? Did you do a write up on that?

I've done similar to another car, only in reverse, went from black to body color. Used some 3M vinyl wrap. Easy peasy.

Anybody catch the difference in the chrome/black preproduction Roady?

I installed my Roadmaster Blacked-Out B-pillar trim back in October 2014. I ordered a kit off Ebay after seeing these piano-black pillar covers on another Roady wagon. It not expensive, and does change the look of the car quite a bit. Not sure if it's BETTER or not (my son Eddie hates the look), but it's different...which I DO like, and goes with my Gran Sport theme I guess, since Buick is famous for blacking out window trim on the GS/Sporty models.

I only used the B-pillar trim, even though it came with the C-pillar blackout panels as well. I left the C-pillars off because GM did not run the chrome window outline trim above and below the C-pillar trim on Roadmasters (or 91 Custom Cruisers), like it did on the B-pillar area trim.

I masking-taped the black panels on the C's, stood back, and it just didn't look "factory" to me. The black on the C's also stuck out more, and seemed to take away from the curved/sloping rear 1/4 window angle design GM gave these Roadmaster wagons on the C-pillar trim. If this was my '92 Custom Cruiser or a Caprice wagon, where the chrome outline trim continues straight-back on rear door and into the rear ¼ window, I most likely would have used that black C-pillar trim to tie it all together, but on the Roadmaster it just didn't look “correct” to me.

The black trim itself is VERY shiny and very hard plastic, and is attached with 3M mounting tape, already applied on the panels out of the box. Peel the red backing off and they just stick on. You DO have to take some time to find what panel goes where, as many panels look very similar and you could possibly confuse them, as the widths and angles vary just a tiny bit on many panels.

ANYWAY the B-pillar black trim fits well and seems well made. After two years it still looks just like it did when I first installed it, BUT remember my car is not a daily-driver, is garaged and does not see bad weather at all. If you daily your wagon, and your car spends a lot of time coated in road salt, rain, dirt, or baking in the sun, I have no clue how these will last for you. I do wax these when I wax the car, just as a precaution. Again mine still look just like the day I installed them.

About my only complaint is these do show fingerprints, so will have to get in the habit of closing the door on the wood instead of the pillar. And again the trim is a little thick…stands away from the door a little bit.

A BIG tip if you decide to order a kit and do this, I would pre-paint the area behind the new plastic trim black first before installing it. I added the trim, and could still see some white around the trim edges....and I thought I could live with that, but it bothered me enough, especially in the direct sunshine, that I taped the car all up and painted around the edges of the new trim with Semi-gloss enamel. NOW it's ALL black, and looks a LOT better and more like what the factory would have done. Blacking out around the trim also lessened the look of “thickness” of these panels too. My OCD stopped screaming after that.

Again, it may seem silly to paint the area you are about to cover, but especially if you have a light-color car, it will look better if you do this. If you are a better painter than me you could just paint that area and save yourself the funds of adding the plastic trim itself, but I can’t paint gloss that well, and unless you get right up close, it looks almost factory original now.

-Mike

Check out this pre-production photo for the '91 Olds Custom Cruiser. It too was supposed to have this are blacked-out. I wonder how much GM saved on each car by just leaving the area body-color on production cars?



Oh and if you squint you can see the chrome Oldsmobile emblem on the front edge of the hood above the headlight. GM never installed this on production Cruisers either. When I had my '92 Cruiser I learned that the part number IS in the GM manuals, and it's the same part number the '88-94 Oldsmobile FWD Cutlass Supreme had for the hood emblem is DID get. I almost added this to my '92 but sold it before I got around to doing that.

-Mike

Andebe wrote:

Anybody catch the difference in the chrome/black preproduction Roady?

What am I missing here?

81X11 wrote:

Andebe wrote:

Anybody catch the difference in the chrome/black preproduction Roady?

What am I missing here?  

Pamphlet photo shows it reveresed. Wide black,thinner chrome. Chris's photo shows what we ended up getting.

The pamphlet wagon would look better,IMO,with black boxes around the handles to tie together that bottom piece. It would be very subtle.

The goal of the blacked out pillars to create a floating roofline look like the Ford Flex has successfully done. I think the blacked out pillars looked great with the earlier models that had body color-matched painted roof racks; It did make the roofline look sleeker.

i got mine from ebay. it was just vinyl, but the 2 pcs did not fit i had a local vinyl sign guy cut me 2 pcs and i put them on and did some final trimming

Hmmm, they do look good, but something would be hard to notice on a color that's really dark already. Would look good on the rear door of a Caprice or a '92 Olds too.

Took this at the ballpark here yesterday.  



I like the blacked-out pillar a lot.  

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

-Mike

Really works well on your ride,Mike.