Restoring Painted Body Moldings

**Swanicyouth** · 07-27-2014, 08:24 AM

So, here`s another little detail related project I got myself into. I`ve noticed the trim moldings between my fender flares and quarter panels / fenders were looking pretty grubby. Basically, you don`t see these type of painted moldings too much today on newer cars - but they were around about a decade and a half ago.

Let me show you what I mean...

Closer....

Basically, as you can see, these moldings come painted from the factory the body color and the paint is failing. Surprisingly, Nissan still sells these moldings - however, there is some murkiness if they come painted or not. To replace all 4 moldings (not the fender flares themselves) the cost is about $200 just for the parts.

Not that I wouldn`t pay that if they came painted. The problem is, nobody can seem to guarantee me they will come painted. The other issue is, replacing these requires mud flap removal. The last time I tried to do that - the first bolt I removed snapped off flush in the fender. The bolts are rusted on, thin, & seized.

By far, the worse of these moldings is the LR (pictured). I figured if I could come up with some way of repainted these in situ - I could avoid a lot of headaches. So, I kicked around a few ways of doing this - and decided to give the Least Painful Method (LPM) a go.

First, I gathered some supplies from Home Depot:

The pens have triangular erasers with sandpaper strips I glues on them. I figured I could carefully tape off the moldings from the paint and use those to sand the moldings so the new paint would stick better and I could flatten out some of the failing paint.

The tape is from 3M. Little did I know there were multiple types of 3M blue painter`s tape. Not only does 3M have their painter`s tape divided into classes designated by color, the colors also have sub-classes.

Note...one tape has print on the tape and one doesn`t:

The one with the print has "edge lock" technology and just is a much better tape. The "edge lock" means if your painting next to the tape, paint won`t seep under the edges. This feature actually worked pretty well. The glue is better on the edge lock tape and doesn`t seem to want to leave glue-tracers all over your paint when you peel it off. I would recommend this edge lock tape over the standard blue stuff. It`s a few dollars more.

The inside of the good stuff`s roll is green opposed to white:

So, I painstakingly taped off these little strips of trim. While it took several minutes, this tape really worked well for this task:

Then I got my little micro-sanders I made and went to town sanding the trim as smooth as I could get it. I wasn`t going for perfection, but a huge improvement would be nice.

After they were sanded pretty flat, I added some paper to protect the flares during painting:

I decided against trying to rattle can these things for a few reasons. I already had a bottle of touch up paint my body shop made for me. The good thing about this paint is it actually matches perfect. They blended it using test panels to match the exact color of the car - not what the exact color is supposed to look like according to the manufacturer. Also, rattle can-ing anything on the car means overspray on the paint and glass, unless you cover the entire car in a bubble except the area you are painting.

This was the first touch up paint I ever used that was a perfect match:

Prior to the painting, I cleaned the moldings well with Prep-All & a Costco MF:

I figured I had the perfect little paint brush already on hand. I used the foam sticks available from CarPro USA and went at it:

Since the rears were the worse, I probably applied 5 coats - drying with a heat gun in between coats. The fronts weren`t too bad - so only 2 coats were needed. Once they dried, I carefully peeled off all the tape and paper. I was pretty happy with the results. 90%+ improvement.

After:

If you look closely on the above rear, you can still se some fine texture sanding didn`t completely remove. But, you would almost have to examine the car with a microscope to catch it - where before the failing paint stood out like an eyesore to me.

The fronts weren`t as bad, so they came out pretty sweet:

Said and done, this project cost me under $15. All I didn`t have on hand was the tape and the erasers. I think small details like this keep older vehicles looking new and detailed. I`d love to see others` little restoration type projects on older vehicles.