For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

How's it holding up? Do you have before/after pics?

The idea of painting plastic panels doesn't set well with me (should be the color it is when it is mixed/melted IMO), but people to do it.

And what type of plastic are the door panels/kickpanels/whatnot made of? I have to repair mine; I'm sure aftermarket is crap.

(damaged interior panel pic below)

Thanks.


IM

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I did all of mine and it's holding up just fine, it's been a year or less on some parts. I used Buford's Aerosol Vinyl Dye. I went from the burgundy interior to a graphite grey. It was easy an affordable.

Here's before, during & after on the door panels

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

And then the dash panel

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I really don't have any pics of the interior before, but it was all burgundy. I also recovered the headliner.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Can't find a blue replacement part?
I have never dyed plastic, but I have bought rigs that were dyed, and it always flaked off, eventually.
Should be easy to find in a wrecking yard, Craigslist, etc. Sometimes I get parts from a local tow yard.
I don't know what part of ID you're in, but there is no shortage of square-body parts trucks around here.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Heres my blue interior . The dash is a oem dash that has been painted for years . The rest is oem parts that has been painted . I sprayed the whole interior . I went to a local paint shop and had them mix me a quart and did the whole interior when I did the resto . Worked great for me . If you prep correctly it will work fine . Just remember to clean clean clean and then clean some more . Its all about prep .

You are correct that aftermarket is crap . I orderd a couple pieces when I was doing mine and said nope . I sent them back and found oem stuff and repaired if needed . It looked so much better .

Sorry , No before pictures. Every thing you see has been painted .

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

This is a short howto article on identifying interior plastics.
http://www.urethanesupply.com/identify.php
I'd almost be willing to bet the interior on our trucks pre-dates the requirement for Recycling ID marks but there are other ways outlined in the article.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

What piece are you looking for, as I have some extra blue interior trim sitting around.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Original interior plastics can be painted. The key to success is 90% in the prep.

Aftermarket interior pieces can be plastic or poly based. Very difficult to get anything to adhere properly to poly items. Some mfr's even put disclaimers up & recommend not painting.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

yeah, i too was real sceptical about painting door panels, but availability & price made painting the answer for me.
scrub the bejeezus out of them, i used tsp, it is a good cleaner, & adhesion promoter before you spray.
the front panels in my crew, painted the arm rest too
Attachment 1374074Attachment 1374075
the rear doors
Attachment 1374076
did my sunvisors as well
Attachment 1374077Attachment 1374081
i painted mine about 2 yrs ago with all SEM stuff, holding up fine even with my 10 yr old & his friends beating the snot out of the back. only spots so far is if you lift up the window crank washers, some of the paint is wore off behind them

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

SEM worked good for me. The surface texture was shot on the door panels so I wet sanded them and used adhesion promoter and a slightly darker color. If you texture is worn away I don't think you can bring it back. In my case, I did not care.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I don't have pics I used SEM the thing is tho you can paint it with anything and it wont be worth a hoot if you don't prep it right I cleaned twice with prepsol then I used the plastic primer stuff ( activator or whatever they call it) they sell at the auto body supply store

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

The piece that are cracked at the ones pictured bellow.

I. Squeezes in between the dashpad and the door; Rright.
II. Covers the back pillar; Left.
III. Covers the back pillar; Right.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Those type of repairs would be noticed. I doubt you could fuse the pieces together & manipulate the texture to hide the repairs.

I would hit the wrecking yards or look for someone parting a similar truck out. Search the classifieds on here & your local craigslist. The OE pieces from another truck can be died/painted to match. It might require painting all the trim for color consistency though or you possibly could find blue pieces & just swap them in place.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I just purchased the part for right and left sides you have listed in your first pic from LMC, $9.95 a piece plus shipping and they fit perfectly for my 86 C10. The other parts are available from them too.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

after. i will look for before. dash was red. door panels were dark grey. SEM and followed all directions. seems to hold up to anything but a direct hit with something sharp

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I redid my interior exactly 2 years ago.
The trim pieces that I painted where originally blue covered easily but like said above prep is very important.
I washed my pieces several times, then cleaned them with TSP cleaner, then used SEM adhesion promoter, then used SEM Landau Black.
It has held up well. And touches up well too... (I scratched a kick panel)

Attachment 1375308

I even cleaned and painted the shelf for behind the rear set that was grey tweed. It covered well too & it gets some use.

Attachment 1375309

I did buy my door panels aftermarket which came black so I'm not sure how those would hold probably getting touched and used the most. But I like the SEM stuff enough that I'd love to get some GM door panels and try it.

P.S. I ordered some aftermarket pillar trim pieces in the beginning and they were junk... flimsy & didn't fit right.... they got tossed.

Here's my final result...

Attachment 1375310

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Like dog claws? :)

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Like everyone states prep is the key to dyeing plastic. I am in the middle of an interior refurbish.

I used bumper repair kit to repair broken pieces and to fill the holes in my original door panels where the map pockets once lived.

http://www.amazon.com/Bondo-280-Bumper-Repair-Syri...

On the parts that had dead plastic, I cleaned them real good. Then used a red scotch bright pad to clean off the remaining dead plastic. Cleaned them again, shot some SEM plastic adhesion promoter, then sprayed them with some Rustolumen truck bed liner to give them a uniformed texture. I let the bed coating dry for a week and then went back with a scotch bright pad and took the sharpness off the coating and got the texture to my liking. Sprayed them the color I wanted, let them sit for 24 hours and sprayed them with a plastic clear. I am going Torch red so I used dye from a corvette supplier.

http://www.semproducts.com/automotiv...esion-promoter

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/rl...FUoV7AodEWwATw

http://www.mamotorworks.com/Corvette...lding-601950-1

http://www.mamotorworks.com/Corvette...-12oz-106135-1

Pics of the results so far:

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

what year is your truck? And is that the stock bench seat? I've been looking for a bench like that for mine.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Deisel , My truck is a 82 model . The seat is from a 91 chevy truck . I think they were in the early to mid 90's chevy trucks . Being that old they are getting harder to find in good shape .These seats can not be recovered because of there design. If you find one you will have to use your track that came with the truck and adapt them to the seat. This seat works well for me because I am long legged and tall . The seat is not as thick as the oem seat and moves me farther back and down for a better fit for me .

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

It's all in the prep. Mines still doing great. Also covered my headliner in suede.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Cool headliner!

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Thanks. I also wrapped the cloth inserts in the door panels with the same material. It's the little things that make a truck different. I don't think it turned out to terrible for my first time on both the doors and headliner

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Nice job on panels as well as the headliner.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Sorry to necro this thread..

A number of you have said you used SEMs adhesion promoter but there are different kinds of adhesion promoters.

I have this document called SEM training manual. Within it says to use 3836(x) SAND FREE for ABS and PVC. It says to use 3986(x) or 7772(x) for TPO, EDPM, PP and other similar thermoplastics. To tell the difference, it says acetone will melt/smear the former and not the latter. The door panels from my 79 and 84 don't seem to be affected by acetone. Problem is I can get the 3836 locally but I'm having trouble sourcing the latter two.

So specifically which adhesion promoter have you used or better yet, what type of plastic are the factory door panels?

https://i.imgur.com/XdoM65o.png

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I used SEM soap 39362 and then 39863 on my factory panels.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Look at these. I’ve been using USA1 Industries for all my color dyes and prep. They have this and a few other kits, plus they sell the preps individually.
https://www.usa1industries.com/vinyl...eaner-kit.html
https://www.usa1industries.com/paint...s-protectants/

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

We dyed this trucks interior and it turned out decent. We had new jobber door panels but they looked awful so we dyed some original ones.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I used SEM paint on my door panels and all interior trim. I used whatever SEM adhesion promoter the local automotive paint shop sold for that purpose (can't remember the number.) The adhesion promoter I used did not cure well, and the finish paint over it in a test patch was very rough, so I stripped it off and just used the SEM paint alone. It turned out OK.

My door panels had a lot of scratches along the top of the driver's door panel. I assume the previous owner had a watch on his left wrist and drove "truck driver style" with the window down. I sanded down that area with wet sand paper and lost the texture of the surface, but that does not bother me. I am about to repaint the door panels so I will post the completed pics soon.

I did not want to spend the $$ for an OEM style panels for my 83 Silverado, and I did not like the original light tan (buckskin) color because it got dirty too easily. I had a local upholstery shop recover the door inserts with some leftover fabric I had from the stock style recover of the seat - I did have to cut pieces of threaded rod to replace the plastic threaded studs which broke off (that was an experience.) That plastic on the plastic door panel insert is super hard to tap - just chewed up the end of the tap - so they are held in mostly by a lot of wraps of teflon tape. :lol:

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I am thinking I will either use Duplicolor adhesion promoter or nothing.

The duplicolor is cheap enough to try it. They don't specify what type of plastic it is meant to work on but they do show it being used on a bumper cover which is a thermoplastic so it should work.

Thanks for all input.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Subscribed

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

Pretty much how I do all my parts. Dawn dish soap can be substituted for the SEM Soap. I even do the Plastic Prep part twice.

Black is the only SEM color is use. All the other colors I use come from USA1, because they all match our interior colors. Sadly SEM has discontinued almost all of the colors for our interiors.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I'm having a professional dye a pair of Recaro leather bucket seats and a new repro dash pad. He's using a custom mix dye that is water based. He says the "feel" of the dye he uses is far better than what you can get out of solvent dyes in a spray can.

I'm planning to dye the plastic and metal interior trim parts, and console, myself using the USA1 Industries dye and the SEM products USA1 sells. The dye professional seemed impressed with USA1's catalyzed spray dyes (the cans are labeled Seymour paint by the way), even though they're solvent based and not what he would use. I gave him my dye and some original panels to make sure that his dye will match.

I also ordered a new headliner, visors, and speaker kick panels already dyed from USA1. I was going to have the professional dye the visors, but they were becoming brittle and for the cost of him to do them versus new from USA1, he recommended new.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

TKCR

Tina, I ordered all SEM material except the paint is from USA1 what you used on the 73 GMC seat belts and they used on my new headliner. USA1 had said for our GM interior plastic pieces to use the SEM Sand Free adhesion promoter. Finally, after researching the SEM site, I chose to try a final coat of Tac Free 39643 for UV protection.

This is what I have coming in SEM products except paint.
SEM soap, Plastic Prep 38353, Sand Free 38363, Tac Free 39643.

Will give this a try. Mark

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I used Krylon Fusion on my door panels, dash pad and my console. The console was tan, so completely changed color on it. The door panels are holding up good even here in the 100 degree plus temps in Az. I need to replace both door panels eventually as I accidentally broke one of the mounting holes in the drivers side. Has anyone used the door panels from LMC? I've heard they are better now than before as they are made from new tooling.

Re: For those of you that painted interior plastic..
 

I had 2 sets that cracked just sitting in the garage. They replaced that set, and the next set did the same thing. I ended up getting mine from USA1 Industries. I could never find a decent set to restore, although I’ve done a few sets for other people.