Upgrading Trim

This is something I’m slowly eradicating throughout the car: UGLY BARE GREY BUMPY PLASTIC! 
Its EVERYWHERE on modern cars and it looks so cheap! you can even buy brand new AMG Mercedes that’ll come with bare plastic grills and fog-light covers. Frankly its cheap and lazy of manufacturers to send out cars with bare plastic on show, it’d take them no time at all to cover it up.

To fix this problem you will need:
Plastic Primer
Black Paint
Clear Lacquer
Trim tool (bone-tool)
400-600 grit emery
1500 grit wet&dry

Total Cost: Under £20

Total Time: Around 20 mins (spread over 4 days)

Step 1: Remove your trim

If you’re going for the fog-lights consult your owners manual. There are 6 clips holding it in place. I used my right-angle trim tool for this, but a thin flat one would work fine.



Here are the locations of the clips:



Step 2: Prepare

Take a 400-600 emery/sandpaper and key the surface of the trim. You don’t need to worry about getting all the bumps out of the plastic, you just want to give the primer something to stick to. A few layers of primer should smooth out those bumps anyway.

Here’s the difference between the normal trim and the keyed trim. Nothing too significant:



Step 3: Prime

Next clean the panel, dry it off and apply 3-4 layers of primer. Leave 10-20 mins between coats. Once you’ve applied a good base layer, leave it overnight to cure.



Step 4: Paint

The primer I used leaves a frosted finish, so there was no need to key it before painting. I painted around 8 coats onto the trim leaving an hour between each coat. After the final coat your trim should take on a rich shiny black. Mine was so shiny, it’s actually dry in this pic but looks wet! The can wasn’t lying about its super gloss!



Step 5: Lacquer

Leave overnight, now to apply the gloss. Key down the black paint using wet 1500 grit. Take care on the ridges, as the paint is thinner and wears down faster here. Clean, dry and apply a thin layer of gloss. Leave to cure overnight and follow with another 1500 wetsand and a layer of lacquer.

Here they are after 2 layers of lacquer:





Step 6: Repeat a billion times!

This was day 4 and I had to refit them to drive somewhere, but if you build up a few more layers (sanding and cleaning in between), the trim will start to look like it has a layer of polished glass over the top of it. Looks really professional if you have the time for it. I’ll be finishing these off next week!