Anyone That Has Painted Their 3g...molding, Bumpers And All

[ryan86accordlxi]

i was just wondering for those who painted their plastic molding and bumpers....did you use any special kind of paint or did you have to prep it in any different way and did your paint stick and look good?

[staticpat]

so far ive only painted my moldings. i used a can of black bumper spray paint, and it looks pretty good. just make sure to do a few coats. if your planning on doing your bumpers, id put a lot more effort into it, clean it real good, sand it down even and prime it before you paint.

[YK86]

Clean it with a good degreaser (Dawn) and then prep it with wax remover/paint adheasion promoter. This is a must on bumpers and mouldings. If you don't use this stuff, the paint will not stick and the oil/armor all will not allow the paint to go on nicely (pretty much beads up). I used color matched acrylic enamel to do the mirrors, mouldings, bumpers, and spoiler.

[Mike89Accordcom]

Yeah stuff works, also if you have rubbin alcohol, you can use that to clean it. Spray a couple good coats on. Let each coat dry first, then spray the next.

[87accordlxi]

clean it, spray some flexible primer on it, and then paint with a flexible bumper paint. if you dont clean and prime it, then the paint will run right off. even though the bumper isnt totally smooth, you might wanna rough it up with sandpaper a little to get the primer to stick better

[Whitie824]

I want to paint my mouldings too but i am wondering if it is safe to paint them while they are on the car? I dont want to take them off because I know I will accedently bust the little clip things that hold them on and then I will have to order more. So Would It be safe if I taped newspaper around the mouldings and paint them on the car????

[DBMaster]

I masked off my side moldings and it worked just fine. Don't even try to take off the moldings or you will end up buying new ones.

I have to eventually redo my front bumper I have done it twice and I have peeled spots again. I didn't know about adhesion promoter when I did it last time, though. I tried way too many products with silicone in them to try to make the strip black and it is hard to remove all traces.

I also painted the trim pieces under the rear "pop-out" windows and they came out good, too.

[accordlx]

I have possibly the most monochrome paintjob on this messageboard. The only thing I can tell you is to follow the advice of others. I didnt have any problems whatsoever with paint sticking to the side mouldings. I have huge problems with the paint sticking on the front bumper however. No one has bumped the car to my knowledge either.

[DBMaster]

Even my back bumper, which had a lot better paint adhesion, has a few spots where the black paint chipped off. I think if you EVER used any type of oil based product (Armor-All, Back to Black, Silicone, etc.) on the strip to try to return it to black it is nearly impossible to get all of the chemical that has penetrated the plastic cleaned off.

He, he, he, I said "penetrated."

If I ever get the car repainted I am just going to buy new bumper covers!

[flamed89]

when you paint your side mouldings get some scuff pads (red). you can get them at any auto body supplie store. if they are weathered and cracked real bad like mine where use a high build pimer,sand then paint,otherwise just paint 'em.the bumper mouldings are textured, u can sand that out with 180 sandpaper,highbuild primer sand with 320 sandpaper then paint,or just scuff em' and paint em' if you don't care.don't forget to clean em' too

[YK86]

To get the moulding off, take out the one black 10mm nut on the inside by the latch, then take a rubber mallett and tap the moulding towards the front of the car. The clips will slide along the moulding and it will pop out safely without cracking as long as you tap gently. Then you can take a small screw driver and pop the clips off the door. When you insert them back in, you put them in diagonally on the moulding (there are "rails") and slide it in place and then line them up with the holes in the door.

[DBMaster]

YK, even doing that I broke a couple of the clips. After the molding has been on there a long time the vertical pieces that hold the clips get pretty well "stuck" in the channels and the molding will not slide.

My moldings came out good masking and painting with them on the car. If they start to look bad again several years down the road and I am still feeling good about the car I will just buy new ones from Majestic Honda. You can get the whole set for $130. I will then take them to a body shop and have them clear coated (If I want to go with black), or color matched so the paint job will last.

They just seem to have stuff at body shops that we can't match at home.

[pearldrop]

It is almost impossible to make the paint stick after using armor all on them. It takes hours of cleaning to make sure that there will be no flaws. The moldings themselves aren't that expensive. I think it is less than $100 for all of them. When I painted my car I replaced all the side moldings and back bumper. The car has been painted for seven years now, it has been bumped and scratched a few times and there isn't one single paint chip on the plastic. It all matters how clean the surface is. I used no primer and no flex agent, just straight paint - the same stuff on the rest of the car. The only prep work I did to them was a light, light scuff with a red scotchbrite and of course degreasing.

[larnaton]

I used rim paint... it worked beautifully.. I used one can of spraypaint for ALL of my trim, plus my 4 rims(Only one coat though)