Painting Plastic Trim
 

The wife smashed into another car - again - and after looking it over, I am doing the repairs myself and pocketing the difference. Mostly, I am simply replacing a few front end parts like head light assembly, turn indicator, bumper, as well as the grille and headlight trim strip which are both plastic.

My D1 is Alpine White, and I need to paint them both. My plan is to acquire some of the matched aerosol paint from one of the web suppliers and do it myself. Does anyone know if these plastic parts come pre-primed from Rover? If not, do I need the special primer that adheres to plastic? By the time I buy the paint, clear coat, and primer, the paint is getting expensive.

Krylon Fusion for Plastics works REALLY well on trim pieces. Several guys (including myself) have used it with great results.

Search "painting flares" "painting trim" or something similar, there are a few picture threads.

You can use an adhesion promoter, but IMO you don't really need it, just clean and tape off your surface and spray away.

The parts arrived today, and they clearly have a gray coating sprayed on the front. I was told these would be black plastic, and that is simply not true. I'm going straight to base coat and clear coat unless I hear otherwise. I will not be using the Krylon product because I'm looking for a better color match.

to do it yourself the right way it will prolly cost more then just getting the pieces sprayed at a local body shop.....

the aerosols are ok.... but not for large sections of bodywork your more then likely going to be able to tell the difference.

im with jeffrudy if you are doing it white and want it to look perfect you are better leaving it to the pros. if you are just doing black trim like the grill or wheel arches then rattle can is fine. i would not be trying rattle can an alpine white to match. because it wont. your truck is not the same color as it was when it came out of the factory. its faded some. a paint shop can match what it is now rather than what it once was from the interwebs.