Ok. I thought I would share with the community some of the things I have learned from other auto communities. First of all I wanted to share something that makes a pretty big impact on your vehicle with minimal cost.

Painting plastics.

This is a relatively easy procedure, just very time consuming to do correctly. Depending on the amount of peices you want to paint, you could be upwards of a week working on getting this just right. So I will go over my way of painting plastics and getting a very nice, tight, and durable shine to them:

Step 1, Planning:

Plan plan plan. I cant stress it enough. The little plastic peices that you are considering painting are expensive, If you paint the wrong piece, or its ugly as sin. You are stuck with it unless you buy a new one. So plan where you want it to go, what color you want it to be, and whether or not you can live with it out of the rig while you paint it.

Step 2, Gather materials:

After you have made your selections, and decided on a color. Go to a local autozone, pepboys, etc. You will need a few things...
1. Mineral Spirits. A quart should do fine.
2. Varying grit wet/dry sandpapers (I like 80,120,500,800,1000,2000) 5 packs should do fine.
3. Rubbing compound (the finer the grit the better)
4. 2 Spray Bottles (nothing fancy)
5. Tack Rags
6. Bulldog Adhesion promoter (or actually any kind of adhesion promoter.)
7. Sandable Primer rattle can (always lighter than the base color you are using)
8. Lacquer base color rattlecan (whatever you chose)
9. Clear lacquer rattlecat
10. orbital sander
11. a power buffer helps but not neccessary.

Step 3, prep work.
prep prep prep and prep some more! Prepping the surface is the KEY AND MOST IMPORTANT STEP TO PAINTING. A shoddy prep job will yield a shoddy paint job every time. The more time you spend prepping, the less time youll be fixing imperfections toward the end.

1. Remove the peices you are about to paint from the vehicle carefully without breaking them. If you are unsure how a peice comes off, pull carefully and try to logically think where it is connected. If it is in a place where you can access it with a ratchet, its probably bolted. If not, it is probably just clipped, these require a pretty good tug to get them loose.

2. after the peices are removed, clean them with soap and water and a scrub brush. very thorougly to remove the armor all or residual dirt.

3. Fill one of the spray bottles with mineral spirits.

4. install the lowest grit sandpaper on your orbital sander.

5. spray the peice and soak it thoroughly with the mineral spirits.

6. Go to town with the sander, spraying and lubricating with the mineral spirits as you go. Sand and spray until the factory texture is completely irradicated. You may have to go through a few slices of sandpaper before you are through.

7. Stop and inspect the peice and make sure that there is no trace of the original texture existing. there may be small scratches from the coarse sandpaper, but fear not we will address that.

8. after you are satisfied that the texture is gone, its time to get a little smoother. install the next grit up (120) and repeat the process. sand and spray and sand and spray.

9. Inspect your work: remember we are going for perfectly flat. perfectly. any imperfections will become a pain in your *** later when we start laying down color.

10. Repeat this tortuous sanding cycle until you get up to 1000 grit. sand a few times with 1000 untill that sucker shines. There should be no imperfections at this point. perfectly smooth is the goal here. Keep sanding until you get there. This process is very very slow and painstaking but it is worth the extra effort.

11. I know this step seems counter productive, but its neccessary. go back to the lower grit paper, and rough it up a little, to give the primer something to bond to. dont go overboard and put some deep gashes in it, just rough it up a little.

12. clean the peice again with soap and water. dry with a towel. or carefully with a heat gun if one is handy. dry it thoroughly.

13. open up the tack rags and blot over the entire surface of your prepped peice.

step 4, adhesion promoter

1. Open up your can of adhesion promoter. start spraying your piece adequatley, end to end in one large sweeping pattern. cover most of the area without letting anything run. Wait 15 min for the coat to become tack and do it again, etc. I do this usually 6-8 layers. just light coats, dont let it run. AFter the last coat, give it a good couple hours to dry out.

2. Fill the second water bottle with distilled water. pull out a 500 grit peice of sand paper and just hand sand the promoter spraying occasionally with the water bottle to lubricate. Remember you are looking for uniformity here, so just use your best judgement. I like to take a flashlight and shine it sideways across the surface of the peice to track down any high or low spots.

3. Tack rag blott the area again. then spray one last very light coat of adhesion promoter

4. Let set again for a few hours. I sometimes will leave this overnight.

Step 5. Primer

1. The primer routine is pretty much the same as the adhesion promoter.

2. Spray 1 very light coat, now you are faced with a problem, you can do one of two things as far as lube goes. you can just use water, which is very forgiving and you really cant use too much. mineral spirit use at this point will start yeilding a much smoother surface with less work. But you have to be able to feel when too much is too much or you will strip the surface out. I usually just use water because I'm a chicken.

3. spray, wait, lube, sand, tack, repeat. all the while increasing in grit. Continue in this fashion until the entire surface of the peice is covered in baby butt smooth primer. I usually go with 10 coats. I wouldnt use anything lower than a 500 grit. I would at this point forget that anything lower than 500 existed. Its playing with fire. I would start at 500 and go all the way up to 1000. 2000 you need to save for later. Get that primer smooth smooth smooth. It will save you trouble later. I would leave this sit overnight to allow the primer to stick to the adhesion promoter.

Step 6 basecoat:
1. your primer should be fairly hard and durable at this point. It is time to apply the basecoat. (color coat)

2. This is the same process as the primer. only increasing above 500 is usually unneccessary. Spray light coats, wait to dry, sand lubing with water or spirits depending on your comfort level, Tack rag, repeat. Again 10 coats is my usual. Get the base coat as smooth as the primer, which shouldnt be difficult to do if you prepped your piece right. finally, The last coat, especially if the base coat is metallic or pearlescent or something crazy. spray one last coat very lightly and do NOT sand it. Let the peice sit overnight.


Step 7 clear coat:
This part is the most difficult.

1: after the peice has dried from the promoter, primer, and basecoat and seems fairly sturdy, its time to clear it all. If there are any imperfections from lack of prep, now is the time to address them. sand sand sand, paint paint paint, until the whole thing is as smooth as glass. Now remember anytime another shot of paint goes on this thing, it HAS to sit overnight or else the clear coat wont take.

2. get out the clear lacquer that we bought and repeat the same process, spray, wait, sand, tack, repeat (this is where you want to use the 1000 grit paper.) This buisness takes a lot of elbow grease. (Do NOT use the orbital, youll strip it clean off.). I usually like to put 15-20 coats of clear, the thicker the clear the easier it is to get a great shine and sand it level. Spray, wait, sand, tack, repeat. Again.

3. After you have the clearcoat lacquer on the peice and you are satisfied with the amount and thickness of the clear. Wait some more. I prefer 30 hours of wait time in a hot dry environment. (ive used my oven a couple of times at low temps of 100 and left them in for most of the week.) being carefuly to suspend the peices rather than placing them on the rack. THis isnt totally necessary, a good 40 hour cure time in a dry area at room temp should cure it just fine. A good rule of thumb is to find an inconspicuous place and press on the paint with a fingernail. If it leaves a mark, its not ready.

4. Finally after the thing has cured, it should be as hard as a glass bottle. Pick up the water sprayer and some 2000 grit sandpaper and sand untill your elbow hurts. The peice will start to cloud up. Thats what you want to see. There will be splotches at first, some parts cloudy some parts shiny. you want to sand untill it is all cloudy and uniform. Take a tack rag to this after you are done to pick up the rest of the particles.

5. Remember that rubbing compound we bought? Open her up, and you can do this two ways....first, you can use a orbital buffer, squirt some compound all over it and go to town on the peice. This is very very difficult to control and if you arent careful, use too much pressure, you will burn off the clearcoat that you worked so hard to apply. My method is much simpler. An old rag, a bench and a long time scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing with a lot of elbow grease. Squirt some compound on the end of a rag, put your finger behind it, and go to town. This way takes for-e-ver, but it is much more controled and you have little to no chance of burning up the clear coat. Rub that peice down with compound untill it looks like a mirror. It will take a lot of time, hours of hand rubbing and alot of rags. Your fingers will hurt, I promise.

6. Perform the nail test again. If it still marks, give it another 20 hours of cure time untill you can no longer mark it. It should end up glass hard. After you are satisfied, reinstall the peice, it should bend quite nicely since we so meticulously prepared and put promoter on the surface before painting.

5. Wait about a month after install before applying your favorite wax!

people will wonder where you got that fancy schmancy interior color package, and you can say I DID IT!

good luck, if need help let me know and I can help answer any questions.

 

WOW, that was so comprehensive, I could probably start a painting business.
Very good procedures
I followed most if not all your steps when I painted my wind/bug deflector the same color as my Bolder Gray H3
Good results

 

yeah it works like a charm. pretty cheap too. Much cheaper than taking the stuff to a body shop, and if you are meticulous you can get just as good results as they could do.

I wanted to include some pictures, but alas, I have nothing to paint. maybe I will find some random peice of plastic to paint and edit this post and include some step pictures.

 

 

I painted my door trim caps, and then I buffed the crap out of the center console in the pic above. It was shiny before, but now I can use it to pick my teeth.

 

Great info!