Rear Quarter Glass Surrounds Refresh

Product Review

PLASTIC TEXTURE AEROSOL (Link) 

MASTERTEX

Great little product this and I have yet to find a surface it does not stick to. As a plastic texture spray it does what it says on the tin, textures! Spray up close for more texture and further away for less. The colour dries matt black although this can easily be over-painted. I have known a few modders who have worked on dashboards etc then go to all the effort of flocking, with this product you can keep that OEM look.

REAR QUARTER WINDOWS PLASTIC REFRESH

The plastics around my rear side windows were looking a bit, um... worn. I had managed to 'damage' one with an orbital polisher some time back. I was young and naive back then! Additionally the hard plastic/rubber was tired and blotchy. I did a reasonably good job of cover up with some satin paint (nothing that would win an award). However after the glass had been removed for the cars respray this finish was cracked and crazed. Not the paint effect I was looking for! So something had to be done. 

Initially I had to clean up the plastics, removing the old paint I appreciate most of you won't have to do this, although I did find that the finish would have been probably good enough to leave without all the messing about with paint (I just wanted to try the paint method!). There was nothing special about my cleanup, fine grade wet and dry paper was used down to 800 Grit. and then the surfaces were cleaned up with thinners. The thinners actually do eat at the surface a little and this is where you can get a really good finish. 

Texture spraying

As with everything, preparation is king and I went for a super masking session, in the UK we have what are called broadsheet newspapers, I favour one called the Telegraph for my masking up as it covers large areas easily and I can also expand my mind whilst doing it! For the fine masking work I have adopted the use of green 'frog' masking tape as this eliminates any paint bleed, generally everywhere else I use standard masking tape that you can pick up anywhere. 

Top Tip!

The plastic texture spray has a wide angle spray jet which projects at about a million miles an hour. Test it first and mask very wide and well!

So after the application of a fine surface texture and just 30 minutes later the surface had dried to a matt finish. To this I applied some standard Satin black acrylic. 

Finished product. It may be difficult to see in the photo but the surrounds really do look like new. As with every untried method, it is always a bit of a risk although on this occasion I am going to call it a win!