Is it possible to jolly up the black plastic parts by painting them? If so, what paint works?
Cheers.

"bumper black" spray seems to work on all the non glossy areas ....panieers etc

blakey and a many others have had some great resullts

Hi BooG,
I've just painted a black indicator housing white!

You'll just need some brand of plastic primer for starters and then I would use Plastikote for black parts, but for the matching white I had to use acrylic car rattle cans (Halfords). Probably most paints would be OK, but I would avoid cellulose paints on plastic.



Paul.

Wow! Very cool!
Will pick up some tomorrow!

I picked up this tip from another forum, although I can't locate the original source right at the moment. Instead of painting, it is possible to restore sun faded plastic to its original look using a mixture of 2 parts paint thinner to 1 part boiled linseed oil. Rub the mixture into the plastic and wipe off any excess. The plastic will be restored to original black colour with appropriate sheen.

Before and after photos

Wow robmack, what a difference!

I wonder how long it lasts. I worked in a boat place and the saledman used to rub the fibreglass boats down with Johnsons Baby Oil and wow what a smooth looking finish but it only lasted about 3-4 weeks and back to dull and chalky finish but by then he had their money.

It should last longer than 3-4 weeks. The linseed oil will dry to a film; baby oil won't create such a film. Better than linseed oil would be tung oil. It is one of the ingredients of varnish and will produce a more durable film. The thinners help the oil penetrate the plastic. I've done plastic restoration on some of my K75 parts using Liberon furniture oil that I had to hand and can attest that it does work.

I've seen the hot-air gun treatment but prefer something less aggressive.

My method is remove the discoloured surface as you would with paint. I use a cutting compound:



Then a polish that doesn't turn white or milky on plastic. The two that I've found to safely avoid turning black plastic grey are Mer and my preference now, Autoglym Aquawax:

Hope this is the right place, it is an old thread, saw this idea on tiktoke, most of the stuff on there is sh*# but this worked, I saw people on here talking about the plastic stone guard for the front guard, so I dug mine out from the depths of my shed, coincidentally I just painted and replaced my front guard with one from a 1100LT the stone guard came with it, I was not going to put it on as it looked terrible, check this out,






Put the heat gun on low and go slowly

Yes, that is an old trick that detailers use to repair scuffs and scratches on soft plastic interior and exterior parts like door, window and seat trim.  Works pretty good, but you need to get a bunch of practice before you go after any parts that are hard or expensive to replace. It's very easy to make the part look worse than before you "fixed" it.

For really small damage, I have used a butane cigar lighter which has an intense but focused flame.  Gotta be really careful with that thing, though.  The trick is to be able to get rid of the shine.  I have had a little bit of success with ScotchBrite or 800/1000 grit paper getting the shine blended into the matte finish of the part.

Yes I would not try it on fancy stuff, don’t feel that confident, but the lid on the elect box under the back of the tank has always just sat there all bowed and bent up, and possibly let moisture in, while I had the heat gun handy I put some weight on the lid run the gun around it, it now clips in and is flat, what else can I fix with it