Fading Fender Flares

Would yall suggest painting my fender flares?

 

Depends. If she's a street queen, then sure! If not, and you go off-road, and kiss the occasional shrub/branch or two, then I'd say not and do the heat gun treatment like I did. Works fantastic and lasts quite a while. They will eventually fade again, but doing the heat gun every few months is better than having your paint get scratched. Scratches in the plastic are barely visible when it happens unless they are faded. But maintaining the plastic will be better than having to repaint. And cheaper. My flares lasted like 5/6 months before they started showing signs of fading again. Even then it's not that bad. That's my opinion anywho..

 

I wouldn't think to paint them at all. After a few weeks it will start to chip and look worse then it what you began with. I think the better question is what is the reason you want to refinish them, is it scuffs and scratches or fading/oxidation?

If its the later, then i would get a buffer and some cutting/buffing compound, get all the haze off, then work with a finer polishing compound until they have a nice finish to them. If its scuffed up good, you could start with heavier compound.

Heat gun method. Is that to remove oxidation? Im not familiar with it.

 

Well I didn't work on getting the layer of oxidation off myself. I just took a heat gun to them and it kinda just resurfaces them from the heat. Don't have any technical terms for you on how it works. I just know it does. Ha. Not sure if buffing out the layer of oxidation would help make it last longer after heat gun treatment. I might try that next time. But yeah. Here's my "write-up" I did a while back with pics.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...c-with-heat-gun-works-my-review.348248/page-2

 

Did you do that with the flares on the car? Seems like you are softening, possibly even melting the top layer of plastic, causing any imperfections to smooth out. We used to do this during fender rolling to keep the pain from cracking. Interesting approach.

 

Yeah while on the truck. And I don't like to think or say thatit's 'melting' it. But I guess you could say it kinda does. But it doesn't get so soft that it actually melts. It somehow makes the plastic , Idk, looking for a word, wanna say pourous, or outgas, making the fresher plastic underneath and top layer blend together. Idk it's trippy how it works. Again no idea what exactly is going on. But it works. And I even held the heat gun on an inconspicuous area for a while to test and see if it'd actually melt. And it didn't. But I wasn't gonna hold it there longer than I was comfortable with just to see. But when I do it again, I'm going to take the flares off this time. Just because I'm not comfortable heating up the surrounding fenders. And the thinner edges on top that are touching the fender heat quicker than the rest and are trickier to go over..

 

If theyre stock plastic black flares, i read somewhere you could heat them up with a heat gun to make them look new again. Been wanting to do this to my truck mysslf. Can also do this to plastic parts of bumpers too

 

I was thinking of spraying mine with rattle-can bed liner. Anyone have any long term reviews of that?

 

I cleaned, primed and painted my heavily faded flares.

About a year ago and they still look hey black.

I wheel, drag it through brush, etc and it's fine. The only issue I have is the leading edge of the rear flares are a bit pitted from the winter gravel and dirt road driving. But that's expected. The fiberglass was horrifically pitted and chipped from 16 years of driving. So I didn't expect the paint to last long in that spot.

 

Heat them ,followed with black magic.

 

I had to do the heat gun treatment on my bumper cover, but I found that a couple treatments of Black magic worked fine for the flares, and it seems to be holding up.

 

I use Mr Clean Magic Erasers. Works the same as the heat gun, however, you can't screw it up lol. I do it every few months and they're good

 

I bought a case of Stoner brand trim shine off Amazon. Comes in an aeresol can. Mine look new.....after 11 years in the south with lots of sun..... I spray about every 3 weeks or so

 

I plasti-dipped my black flares a few weeks ago. Obviously, the jury's still out out on how long before it fades, if it does. Or if it peels before fading, but either way, it goes on and comes off easy, so no biggie.

 

I plasti dipped mine too and it didn't last long. But I drive down a dirt road everyday so the roacks chipped it and once it was exposed underneath where it chipped, it very quickly started peeling. And it was a bitch to get off when I did it to try the heat gun. Tried goo gone and shit dissolved all over the side of my truck so I had to scrub it all off. Probly shoulda removed the flares when I did that. Power washer got the plasti dip off fairly easy as I did goo gone on the fronts first. But yeah, I'll NEVER use plasti dip again myself. It might be ok if care is taken with it. But yeah, no thanks for me...

Looking at the time I posted my 'review' on the heat gun method, I hadn't realized it's been almost 10 months since I did it. And haven't redone it yet. But she's due for another treatment. And they still don't look all that bad even in the az summer heat this year. So I'm probly gonna wait another month or so before I do it when it's starts to cool down a lil.

 

I did this method. scuffed them up with sandpaper, sprayed a few coats of bedliner, then coated with satin black.

2 years later and plenty of wheelin, they are holding up great.

 

Mothers Black Magic, easy, can't screw it up, comes out get