There's also a surface prep called Bulldog adhesion promoter or something like that.

What you do is put a few coats of the stuff on with a rag, then right after the last coat flashes, shoot your trim paint or dye.

The stuff is designed to slighly emulsify the plastic (Smells real bad...) and then when you shoot the paint on, it is actually drawn into the trim piece.

I used it when changing some red panels to black a few years back and it's still holding up great...

Also works well when painting exterior parts like air-dams bumpercovers, etc.

 

Check out this thread.
https://www.rx7club.com/forum/showth...ht=restoration

 

Wankelguy - How has it held up for ya? What kind of maintenance have you done to it?

 

What a great topic. I'm also wanting some tips as to how to do a repair on my panels. I have a "rip" or "crack" in each side. This from an earlier vandalism attempt. The jerks were caught but now I need to repair these rips/cracks. Any suggestions as to how to repair the plastic would be greatly appreciated. Is there such a thing as plastic welding or bonding that can return back a natural looking finish?

Thanks.

 

So far it has held up great. Haven't done a thing to it since I armor-alled it a few months ago.

 

Hey Guy's this is a great thread. I tried the sandpaper and it worked great. Thanks for the great idea! If you have any more keep em comin!

 

I've had to do a few burgandy interiors as they always turn brown or green after long exposer to sunlight. Painting with vinyl paint works well if you can find the right colour match. Leather panel inserts and seat flaws can be reconditioned with leather shoe paint found at most shoe repair stores.Lots of colours available too.

 

i want to see the pic, but its not showing up.

 

If you send a plastic sample to the manufacturer they can probably mix up a matching dye color for you.

 

thanks for bringing this thread back to life, this is good stuff!

 

this is a great thread. it sounds just like the inside of my rex (burgandy/white). i have a question. where is everyone buying the sem burgandy dye? i need to get some!

 

i did a google search for "SEM Color Coat" and came up with a bunch of matches.

 

Archive material here me thinks. Eh Inittab?

 

definitely. i actually browsed the archive looking for this info before i bumped the other thread about it.

 

I painted my interior plastics with that new krylon fusion paint. seems to be good. but it might come off easier than die.

 

couple restoration things for plastic:

dyes: got to make sure you get everything off the surface before you dye it or it will just repel the dye (or just won't soak in, easily come off later). Meguiere's paint cleaner works really well for this.

painting: If you do a serious job of painting it you're probably going to lose the texture, but it will still look really nice. Of course, you could always just hose it down with some paint and act like nothing's wrong. For real paint, start with the paint cleaner, use a plastic-specific primer. plastic specific stuff is going to etch into the plastic a little (I noticed someone mentioned krylon fusion before, good stuff for this reason) and is also flexible (won't harden to a point where it will crack or chip later). From there paint as normal, most of the paints these days are fairly flexible. If not use a flex additive.

polishing out the scratches if you've done the steel wool trick: Novus Scratch Remover. It's made for polycarbonate and vinyl stuff, has the added benefit of working real well on acrylic. Stuff is very good.

My problem is the carpets. We finally just cut the carpet out of the back hatch because it was so bad it was creating burgandy dust on everything. I seriously doubt we can find a color that matches the rest of the carpet in the car, and I frankly know about dick about carpeting things anyway. Maybe I'll do some acrylic paneling or something back there. The rubber matting doesn't look all bad, but it doesn't exactly look great either (and the rest of the car does).

 

What grit of sandpaper should I start out with on the white plastic around the hatch? I have some steel wool as well, but it sounds like I should start with sand paper and then finish with steel wool.

Also when using the Krylon Fusion to paint my shifter cover/stereo surround, do I need any kind of primer? The Kyrlon site says you just spray it, no sanding or priming...anyone tried it?

 

NO, do not prime with the krylon fusion.

 

I don't know specifically but I would start with fine sandpaper and work yourself up if it doesn't work well. If you use too course of paper you can damage the plastic pretty bad. I recommend taking your time with a fine paper or steel wool. Good luck!

 

I had a good deal of luck using a 3M ScotchBrite pad, with a light touch. The steel wool didn't seem to be rough enough, and the sandpaper I had was all a little too scratchy.

 

cpt_gloval
I like the sig, sublime rocks

 

i'm pretty sure everyone in oregon likes sublime.

 

I did my rear panels this way (with steel wool) - worked great, thank Initab.

Ray

 

On my 1979 Rx-7 I have a brown and orange dash. Over time the orange plastic parts of the dash turned kind of a sick yellow color. I went to a local automotive paint store along with a piece of the dash and they were able to color match almost perfectly a can of "Dupont/Lucite Vinyl Color". After treating the effected dash pieces with "Sema Vinyl Prep", I spray painted the dash pieces with several very light coats of the Vinyl Color. It turned out great and the dash looks new. Should work as well with the rear pannels. The store I went to, charged me $20 for the color match and I think the rest of the supplies were under $75. Usually the back of the plastic piece is unaffected by color change and can be easily matched by a competent paint person.

 

How do I get the rear panels out? I got all the screws out but had to stop when I ran into a little snap-on thing at the rear of the panels. I didn't want to break anything so I stopped. How do I finish removing the panels?