Tips on restoring moulding & bumper color ?

[Leadpepper]

Any tips on restoring side moulding and bumper color other that spray paint ?

[tof]

I refinished a black rubber lower front spoiler extension on an NSX by sanding it. Started with a coarser grit and worked down to fine. Came out nice and black. Saw a video on youtube where a guy in asia somewhere was restoring a 1G Accord under a very primitive car port. He seemed to be sanding the rubber trim but with something like 3M scrub pads. If you try this I would go with grey if it is aggressive enough. Be sure to test whatever you do on some black rubber you don't care all that much about.

I just hit the bumper trim on my 1G accord with Meguiar's Hot Shot tire spray for a car show last weekend. Just part of a quick and dirty effort to prep the car. Did a nice job of leaving the trim (and tires) black without any extra shine. Applied to a rag, then to the trim. Of course it may turn brown eventually, but supposedly Meguiars is pretty good about that.

Now if you can figure out a way to rejuvinate crusty dry rubber windshield trim molding, let me know.

[Leadpepper]

Yea my back window rubber was dry and actually was missing in a few spots, I cleaned it pretty good with alcohol and filled in the blanks and thin coat over all with black silicon adhesive in the small tube, keep a gas rag handy for cleanup as you go and it turns out pretty good, you would have to almost know its there to see it

[tof]

Hmmm. Interesting. I might give that a try. Will probably try it on the hatch window.

[Dr_Snooz]

I'd be curious to see how the silicone holds up to UV over time. In my experiments, it doesn't do well. It will lose adhesion to about half of what you put it on, but refuse to release from the other half when you go to replace it. It's a real nuisance. I avoid the stuff like the plague now. Maybe it was just the godawful GE silicone I was using.

[gp02a0083]

Regarding the side molding and bumper trim. One way is to use a heat gun to re-melt the plastic, look it up on youtube. This usually works well for the plastic bits like our bumpers. However trim like our window sweeps and 1/4 moldings are a rubberized/pvc coating. These can be restored but involve a lot of surface prep work, 3m Bristle roloc discs are great for it.

[2oodoor]

Side trim and bumper color restoration.. no permenant solution other than 3m pads, mask it off and paint.
I just painted my sedan sill and rear window and side moulding body color after whiz wheelin them down, however I think that Flexseal product might do well for that. It comes in aerosol and brush on formulas. On my hatch I masked and painted with semi gloss automotive trim spray paint
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t280/roodoo2/Mobile%20Uploads/0414001904a.jpg

[Dr_Snooz]

The sucko part about painting is that if you've used some dressing-type product, like Armor All, the paint won't stick no matter what you do.

[tof]

Ive found that simple green followed by prep-all followed by alcohol seems to get pretty much any surface ready for pretty much any paint regardless of what pretty much anything has been applied in the past. Helps if the surface is non-porous.