Painting Engine Lid Grill and side 'filler' pieces? Options

[TRP]

Hello Gang,

As I continue to noodle on this car while the motor is out, I think I want to paint the black grill and filler pieces. I pulled the engine lid off and removed the rain tray and was just going to pop the grill off. It looks like there are about 18 little black nubbins that need to be removed to fully remove the grill. My experience with these nubbins is that the little pegs often break off and/or the nubbins become unusable.

What's the best way to remove these nuts/nubbins? I could just mask everything off and hit it with the black paint that I purchased from Stoddard/Pelican/Sierra/914Rubber (I forget which) - but that hardly seems like the 'right way'. I also wanted to install the replacement rubber strip between the engine lid/grill. I think I would need to remove the grill to do that properly.

Thanks
Ted

[brant]

Those “nubbins”. Have a metal disc inside

You can sometimes screw them backwards and off of the peg
Many are rusted inside of the nubbin and may not be reusable

Find replacement “nubbins” and use pliers to squeeze them breaking the metal disc. They fall off once you break them by squeezing and this method is less likely to break the pins.

No masking once you take the 3 grills off and all of the letters