HELP! damaged black plastic trim.... any way to 'clean it up'? make it look better?

B

bast525

New member
Hey all... hoping someone can give me some advice here.



My car got hit in a parking lot the other day, scraped along the rear bumper. At some point I will be replacing the whole bumper, but in the meantime I'm hoping I can make it look a little better than it currently does.



The black plastic (unpainted) got moderately scraped up. It wasn't very deep damage, but was very visible as wherever it was scraped it was no longer black, but a greyish color. (it kinda looks like when you use certain 'nauba waxes and accidentally get some on the black plastic... )



I tried sanding it lightly with some 1000 grit, which did smooth out the scrape, but it didn't do anything to bring the plastic back to black... it's still grey/cloudy looking.



I bought this stuff, Mothers "Back to Black" and used that, and it worked, made the plastic look a lot better, less cloudy looking. But... whenever I wash the car or use QD on the car, it goes back to looking faded and ugly.





Is there anything I can do to resurface or otherwise get the plastic to where it isn't grey and cloudly looking w/o needing to re-apply this "Back to Black" every few days?



My insurance isn't going to cover the damage *long story* so it will be a while before I can come up with the $800 to replace the bumper... I just want to get it looking as good as possible in the meantime.



Any tips?
 
You might be able to use a trim dye to restore the color.



Autogeek, Top of the Line, Superior Car Care, etc. should carry this sort of thing.



Good luck and let us know how it works (pics would be great).
 
I would recommend getting your unpainted bumper painted :)



$800 to replace a bumper and paint is absolutely crazy (in a bad way).

I assume this is on your Mazdaspeed3. On all accounts I would avoid getting it through the dealer. Even if you go OEM, they can be had for much less. Ontop of that, there is no need to blend the fenders as its a 2007 and I'm almost positive the difference in colour will be non-existant! You could get an OEM aftermarket replacement too, but fitment might not be as great.



Best of luck!
 
Try APC cleaning it hardcore, then using some RIT dye?



I've never done this sort of thing before, but you can always try it on a small non-noticeable spot, or trash plastic first.
 
The bumper is partially painted... I'd say it's about 1/2 painted and then 1/2 plain black plastic.



The $800 estimate was from two seperate body shops... $380 for the bumper from Mazda, $100-150 to paint, $100-ish for miscellanious hardware (license plate light mounting bracket got smashed, some other things), $150-ish for labor, painting and uninstall/reinstall.



I can probably do the install myself, so at the least, looking at about $600.



I have had no lucky finding a cheaper place to get the OEM bumper.



Truth be told, if I can get the plastic looking decent, the damage to painted areas is so minor that I may just leave it at that and not replace the bumper at all. But only if I can get the plastic back to black and to the point where you have to be right up to it to tell it was damaged at all.



After putting the Back to Black... from anything more than about 10 feet it's almost impossible to tell it was hit. If I can cut that down to like 5 feet... I think I could handle that :bigups
 
the price for the bumper sounds about right, but the misc hardware is kind of iffy IMO.

Doing the labour to remove and install as a piece of cake, so you should be able to save yourself at least 100.



Check out worldpartsexpress.com as they sell OEM parts for 20% above cost. I ordered a master power window switch for my old car for $50, and the stealership wanted $150 + taxes.



Good luck!
 
Kaval thanks for the tip I'll check that site right now.



In the meantime... I'm still hoping I can at least 'clean up' the bumper a bit since it will be a while before I can afford to fix it.





So, for black plastic... how to be able to sand it down and not have it have that cloudy/faded look?



I'm thinking of sanding the whole black plastic part (even the undamaged areas) to make it look uniform. I'll have to start with a heavy grit to get out some of the scraping, and then work my way down to like 1000 grit and end up with a nice semi-gloss look... I did this on the damaged area and it was starting to look pretty nice... almost like it was painted black. This was after I used the "Back to Black" to get rid of the faded look.



I don't understand, if I sand it down like that, why it has that faded look.
 
You might want to look into Black WOW from Richard Lin at ShowCarDetailing. I've used it on non-damaged trim and it is pretty impressive stuff. Not a dye, but brings trim black like nothing I've seen. Try emailing or PM'ing Richard on his board and he'll probably be able to let you know if he thinks his product will solve your issues.
 
Thanks man will do.



Someone on another forum I frequent suggested sanding the whole unpainted part and then prepping it really well and painting it with satin black paint.



Might try that if nothing else pans out... can't make it any worse.
 
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