Cladding Restoration

[CatFish]

Have not tried the heat gun, I am afraid it will smooth out or distort the texture making it look worse and there is not going back once you have heated it, at least the products can be removed. Maybe I will try the heat gun test on a damaged piece of cladding I have and see what it does.

[Mile High VX]

I recently used Mar-Hyde Bumper Cover. It's a coating in a spray can. Just got tired of all of the rub on products and having to redo every few weeks to few months. I removed the front and rear bumper covers, masked and draped the rest of the VX and applied 3 coats. Love the look and if the hold up of a few years is true then worth it to me. Took me about 6 hours total from start to finish.

If I can get the site to let me upload some photos I'll post them.

[CatFish]

I recently used Mar-Hyde Bumper Cover. It's a coating in a spray can. Just got tired of all of the rub on products and having to redo every few weeks to few months. I removed the front and rear bumper covers, masked and draped the rest of the VX and applied 3 coats. Love the look and if the hold up of a few years is true then worth it to me. Took me about 6 hours total from start to finish.

If I can get the site to let me upload some photos I'll post them.

I think that Mar-Hyde is the stuff with the Fiero on the can, I have herd it works pretty good, I will see if I can get a dark grey so when my cladding gets scratched it would show.

The site has yet to let me post photos so I just upload them to my photo bucket and paste the image code, works every time.

[CatFish]

It was not easy to get all the forever black product off the cladding, some came right of and some required acetone, a light scotch bright pad and some scrubbing. Scrubbing to hard with a scotch bright pad will scratch the cladding even a fine one so I had to e careful not to scrub it hard. The acetone is very harsh and will strip paint and etch plastic so I had to be careful not to get it on other finishes. The acetone does make the cladding very chalky and dry looking, so I washed it really good after I got all the forever black removed.

This is what the cladding looked like after a couple of months.


Here is what the rear looked like after stripping the forever black off the rear cladding and applying some trim conditioner, shown next to the un-stripped area.

[ALC1717]

If You Pay I Am Sure A Local Body Shop Will Spray It On For You. It Must Be Cleaned First To Remove All The Old Stuff On The Cladding. If You Cannot Bake it on In A Spray Booth Buy Enough Spray Cans And Do it - Still Much Better Than Any Black Treatment Which You NEVER Have To Apply Again !

[Mile High VX]

This is what I used last and really like the results:

http://3mcollision.com/mar-hyde-bump...tic-04911.html

[89Vette]

Mar-Hyde....Same thing I used on mine.

[CatFish]

Trim and Bumper paint success on the VX cladding.

I tried a lot of different methods to improve the cladding and I finally found a way to even out the cladding, get rid of the chalkiness, discolorations and restore the dark grey color with a cheap and fairly easy to use product that I was very apprehensive to try so I used a test piece of old damaged cladding I had laying around.

I used the Dupli-Color Trim & Bumper paint available at AutoZone (charcoal grey), with good results. I found you must first clean the cladding very good to remove all the old oily products that may have been applied over the years and then wipe it down with acetone, then rinse and dry the cladding. I Found that using the acetone removes all the oxidized plastic from the cladding to get the trim and bumper paint to bond with the cladding properly. (You only need to do this once before the initial application)

Then tape off the lights and areas you do not want paint on. Then spray a very light, and I emphasize very light coating of trim and bumper paint. Just enough to even out the color, this way it will run or not peal. (You can do a second light coat if the color is not even)

The charcoal grey is almost the exact same color as our VX cladding so this just gets rid of the chalky and discolored areas and evens it all out. It is not a color change so scratches and dings do not show like they do with the black die I tried. (The die was not die and ended up pealing in a couple of days)

It is so close in color and bonds nicely to the cladding that even scratches are barely visible and you can touch it up and after a day or 2 in the sun you cannot see the difference in color on the spot touch ups.
I have taken it through many car washes and it still looks great with only one application about a year ago now. If the paint has worn off I cannot tell as the cladding remains a uniform charcoal gray and does not have streaks like the oily restoration products made after it got wet.

I have been to Moab twice and washed it many times since applying it and it still looks good.


This is what the die looked like after about 2 weeks, as you can see the black die is not a good match for the cladding.

This is how the trim & Bumper paint looks next to the botched dies job.