Painting Side skirts

[Barbbachello]

So i managed to find some side skirts on a JDM legacy that somehow ended up in a wreckers in Australia ¯\(°_o)/¯. They are of course all faded and are more grey than black. Seeing as DIY colour matching wont look right im going to repaint them black. They feel like a kind of rubber so do i need special paint/primer/techniques to paint them?

[Dead91silvia]

If you are just going for a black plastic look, I'm sure Thom has a method for this and it might not even include paint.

If it was me, I would be painting them, but thats me. I color match everything.

[Thomistopheles]

I'm sure Thom has a method for this and it might not even include paint.There needs to be some sort of beacon that summons me to threads like this, like the bat signal.

https://sl-i.net/FORUM/images/imported/2013/03/SLIbatsignal_zpsd01682c1-1.jpg

The detailer's approach would be to clean them thoroughly with some all purpose cleaner (Meguiars APC, Optimum Power Clean, something like that) and then use a dressing to darken and protect. I'd recommend G|Techniq C4 trim restorer if it weren't so expensive in Australia. It has excellent darkening abilities and lasts a long time, a year or more. Other products you could look at are Ultima Trim & Tire Guard, Poorboy's World Trim Restorer, Chemical Guys trim gel, and Wolfgang trim sealant. They'll darken it and provide protection for 2-6 weeks, you'd need to reapply every couple washes.

There's another group of products for restoring trim, all dye based. I don't use them because later on the finish will not look even. Nobody wants blotchy, inconsistent dark spots.

Best, most permanent solution? Paint them. Robin knows more about preparing bare plastic for paint than I do... all I know is that you can hand a good body man a stack of cash and your parts, some sort of witchcraft happens, and then he gives you back a set of painted side skirts.

[Huffer]

Plasti-dip them black. It's flexible, needs no primer and it'll adhere just fine.

[Barbbachello]

Plasti-dip them black. It's flexible, needs no primer and it'll adhere just fine.
Rather expensive and hard to obtain in down under I believe

[Ploddit]

i used to paint motorbikes:

Clean them with silicone remover
Sand lightly with 800 wet everywhere, corners, edges and a bit of the inside so the paint runs into the inside to not leave an open edge to be jetwashed off.
Use a plastic primer very sparyingly
Use normal primer with 'softface' see below
Assumming you're not going metallic my supplier BASF/glasurit had a product addded to paint called soft face to make it flexible for this kind of job.

http://techinfo.glasurit.com/en_UK/PKW/ ... 2-111.html (http://techinfo.glasurit.com/en_UK/PKW/Chapter_G/GZ/522-111.html)