Blacked Out Front Emblem

Hey guys first post, been following for a while. I decided to black out my front emblem like MANY others have done, however, I immediately encountered an issue after a few hours of driving.

I pulled the emblem and sprayed 4 coats of Plastic black paint followed by 3 coats of the same brand clear coat. As soon as I took a road trip I noticed the paint had chipped and the chrome was shining through. I hear this is pretty common and I actually looked close at someone's blacked out badge and they had the same chips I did.


So I heard about the bleach method and then searched the web for hours and never found a detailed guide on this site so this is why I'm sharing.

I used regular Clorox bleach, put the emblem in and covered with plastic wrap. It was a slow process.


I emptied the bleach every day, rinsed the emblem and refilled with fresh bleach. This took over a week.




The back was the last to go, not sure why but the chrome eventually went.


Finally about a week and a half later I was able to chip the remaining bronze off and sand the hell out of the emblem.


Repainted (several black coats and clear) Valspar made for plastic. This paint says a primer is not required.


Hopefully this won't chip away like it did before. Although, even if it does, at least its not shiny chrome behind the paint.

Anyways, thought I'd share for those who are trying to keep the stock grill with a blacked out badge.

I plan to make a Satoshi or do the GrillCraft and possibly mount my blacked out emblem in the middle of the mesh.

I still get a sick feeling when I think of touching my new ride with a dremel!

Hopefully this helps someone.

Robbie.

 

Mine chips, I just take it out and spray again. Takes like five min. to dry, and back on it goes.

 

Give it a light sanding ... preping the paint area is a good thing.

 

lets see a pic installed

 

Never seen this bleach method, seems neat! That stage where it turns semi bronze with some black showing through looks pretty awesome! Yeah, chrome won't let paint adhere properly so usually the easiest method is to first sand it up a bit, then apply some self-etching primer, and then go to paint it, and finish up with a few clear coats for extra protection.

 

I sanded the "chrome" on my emblem to get the shine off of it. I would spray it several times and let it sit to dry and then spray it several times, let it dry and come back and spray again. I wanted a thick layer of paint to help resist chipping. Then I sprayed a couple layers of clear on it.

 

If bleach stripped the chrome then oven cleaner would probably work also. I never had a problem with mine chipping however. I just sprayed a few coats of flat black and it stuck great.

 

I have never heard of bleaching or issues with the front emblem.

I did not clear coat mine

When I did mine, I just cleaned it with glass cleaner and dried it off, gave it 10-15 minutes to make sure the glass cleaner was completely evaporated from the surface. Then just painted like normal; 10 min between coats - first coat was thick but like the video showed 50% coverage, just kept rotating the symbol until i was sure the crevices had good coats as well. 4 -5 coats.

put couple hundred miles on it driving around, then 1100 miles driving home from georgia and been several hundred since. no chips or dings yet even through hard spraying from pressure washer to get bugs off.

Maybe the clear coat is causing issues.

 

I havent had any chipping issues on mine. Didnt sand the chrome, just cleaned it. Then sprayed light coats until it was covered so i didnt get any run. Sprayed four coats after that, letting it bake in the sun between coats. Been through heat, rain, ice, and dirt & mud. Still looks good. Painted it back in july.

 

mine has held up well!

But I plasti-dipped.

Here is a link to my build thread http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/2nd-gen-builds/259904-fractureds-txpro-build.html

 

I did not sand the chrome the first time, but after I noticed the chips, I could gently scratch the paint away with my finger nail.

I'm hoping this plastic paint will really adhere to the actual plastic.