Restoring the black trim
 

Does anyone have any tips for restoring the car's black trim. I have tried using a trim polish but it is to far gone for that to fix it. I think some one has tried to paint over it before because it seems to have two layers of paint. Is the best way to pull them off and spray them or will hand painting them look alright? I am trying to make my car look like brand new! :) Also my rear bumper is a bit loose and has dropped about a cm. Does anyone know how fix this?
Thanks heaps

Less work to hand paint than to yank it all off and re-apply it. The adhesive is really wicked stuff; Like a combination of Fast Tack and tar! You can actually dent your fender trying to remove it if not careful.

Perhaps scraping it with some appropriate instrument to remove the paint?...Again, alot of work, and obviously tedious.

The bumper is a skin on an aluminum rail. Perhaps (if you're really annal - like me:)) you could insert a wedge of plastic in there. Might require taking it off. Easier than you think...

Lift carpet, ect in back, and find an access plate in each corner. Under these are what I believe to be the rear bumper bolts.

Get a second opinion on that one! I don't know for sure.

I have a really cool gadget that chucks into an air hammer (standard .401 shank) that is specifically designed to get adhesive-backed trim off without wrecking the paint. I might try it :)

Whoever painted my car just masked the trim off, didn't remove it. You can see folds and wrinkles at the trim edges where they removed the masking before the paint was fully dry - the paint pulled up and out then wrinkled back.

I use Mothers back to black. It works pretty well and lasts a week or two.

I use the back to black stuff too - but mine are pretty nice to start with... I think you'd need something stronger that that. Someone was telling me about a nice way to fix them up one time, but I can't remember... I know there's a way to do it. Painting them would certainly work.

I've used the back to black also - doesn't last very long and if they're in bad shape, it does little good. You might want to try shoe polish - has to be reapplied every once in a while but, IMO, it does the best job of bringing the strips back to life. This is nothing new - folks have been doing this cheap trick for years

Can you sand back the trim or will you wreck it. Then I can hand paint it and polish it. This is what I was thinking. Polishing with a cut and polish seems to get rid of brush marks

Well it's solid rubber, if that's what you mean. You could sand a layer off it and it'll still be black.

Would sanding it down a bit make it look terriable though, I mean would it look really rough, I have never sanded rubber

I would say sanding would not yield desired results.... Unless you sand it, prime it, sand it again with like 280 grit sand paper, re-apply primer, and then paint it.... which would be a lot of work.

Jeff

Oh o.k so sanding not good then, The problem is that the last owner painted over the top of the original faded colour. That paint has chipped off in bits and now there is a mixture of the original trim and the painted over trim and it looks bad. Does anyone have any sugestion about what to do with my fallen bumper.

If it's that far gone, then you might just want to remove it altogether. It's Not My personal choice, but if you do a search here, you will see threads on trim on/trim off, etc. They have pics too. The Search might be under "shaved" if I remember..

Who knows, you might like it with the trim off and your problem is solved.

ACTUALLY..

Here is the Thread

Too bad the new trim is so expensive.

faded side trim fix