New life to bumpers, fender flares, and door cladding

[glo81]

Since it's been nice spring weather, I decided to finally do something about the faded gray plastic trim around most of my Explorer. I've long wanted to do something about it anyway since one piece of molding was slightly bent and flawed after losing a clip. I went to the junkyard and got a replacement, as well as a replacement for the passenger side rear fender flare since it was scratched up where I didn't think painting over it would look nice. After reading about the different options people have tried (Plastidip, Krylon spray paint, Herculiner), I ended up going with Rustoleum Universal Metallic Spray Paint in Flat Soft Iron (I liked this color out of all the gray metallic choices). Once summer comes and my car has to be parked at work outside in 90 degree dry heat, we'll see how this holds up. At home, the truck is always in a garage.

Attached are some pics. There are definitely "gotcha" moments when removing and replacing the plastic moldings. I definitely wouldn't recommended taking them off to paint because you will most inevitably break most of the clips and then have a hard time getting the molding back on, especially for the fender flare. I always find instructions funny when they say "to reinstall, reverse the procedure" because it's never that easy. For the moldings that I didn't replace with junkyard pieces, I just masked off areas with tape and film.

1.

This was the damaged trim I wanted to replace. The back side pic down below shows the clip that was missing in the blue circle.

2 and 3. Final pics

4. The fender flare I replaced and repainted.

5. The white clips are what will pop out and most likely break when you remove the door cladding (in the red circles below). I ended up buying replacements at AutoZone. Green clip is for the fender flare.

6. Back side of door cladding.

7. The green clips (go where red arrows point) will stay on the body of the truck if you remove the flare properly (if you're lucky, they might pop off with the flare undamaged). The clips where the blue arrows point came off with the flare both times I took it off (at the junkyard and the original). Since it is practically impossible to put the fender flare back on the truck with the green clips staying on the body, I just removed them carefully from the truck with a small flat screwdriver without breaking them thankfully. Then I slotted them back on the flare. There was a YT video where a guy instructed that in order to put the flare back onto the truck with the green clips on the body, you just have to align the green clips into the appropriate slots--I'd like to see anyone be successful with that. The angle makes it impossible.

It didn't link any of my pics, so here they are:
1. Imgur
2. Imgur
3. Imgur
4. Imgur
5. Imgur
6. Imgur
7. Imgur

 

[Rayan]

Cool idea! I have been looking for a way to restore the trim on my Explorer, but since it is grey and all trim restorers I have seen are for black trim it has been problematic. If you are looking to make your engine bay prettier after you clean it, treat it with black trim restorer and it looks as good as new.