Some Info About Painting With Enamel.

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DusterDude72 said:
first of all.....you mention you painted your dash and you also mentioned something about plastic adhesion .....so what did you paint? your dash? or your dash pad?

when it comes to plastics,vinyls,fabrics and so on....I suggest cleaning them well and using a scotch bright pad to dull down the surface and then use a rattle can of vinyl and fabric dye... about $5.00 a can and does great.

as for if you painted your dash, why did you rattle can it? the finish of painting with a paint gun is much nicer and you can "dial in" the ingrediants to make it cure to your liking and weather accordingly.

if you are having troubles with the paint curing maybe you should try letting it sit in the hot sun for a day or waving a heat gun over it for awhile.

I personally used an oil based paint to paint my dash. It "said" not to thin it out with any solvents but I didnt care what the can said lol..... so what I did was mixed up the paint 1-1 with medium reducer and then splashed in some hardener into the mix ,pulled out my hvlp gun,set the pressure to about 12 psi, laid a "tack coat" which is a light dusting to give a base for future coats to have a little extra to stick too, then I went through with "cover coat" medium coat. and then I came through with a final coat "wet coat" which is just enough paint to give it a glassy look and evenly covered surface.

I have been using the oil based paints on the interior of my duster so far with AWESOME results. I normally am not a fan of oil based paints due to the slow dry time but when you add reducer and hardener it starts setting up in minutes and is dry to the touch in about 2 hours "tacky" and is cured in about 5 hours and is hardened in a matter of days. and this process is faster yet in warmer weather/in a booth/sitting in the sun.

I also used the vinyl dye on my plastics/vinyls in my interior and have had great results.

I agree as has been mentioned above that your paint work is ONLY as good as the prep time you put into it prior.....and you must either know what you are doing or do your research ahead of time so you do not run into problems such as that......and when in doubt,spray a test spot ahead of time to make sure you get the results your looking for.

if worst comes to worst and you do not have access to air guns or compressors and so on and rattle can is your only option, I suggest scraping it all off,cleaning the surface and re prepping it and repainting with a different rattle can paint .

heres a few pictures of what I did with mine.
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nice job lad, done same to mine! what steering wheel is that?=P~
 
2 Darts said:
FWIW: If I recall Mr. G correctly, the instrument cluster bezels were initially "vacu-formed" with a thin layer of aluminum. The black part of the cluster was painted, while the "wood grain" is actually a brown wash. He used to have a girl come in once a week and do nothing but apply the wash to instrument clusters.
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FYI, one summer in high school I worked for a company that made plastic ornaments and novelty items many of which were "chrome" plated or partially plated. I worked in the plating area.

The way it was done was the parts were masked as necessary and were mounted on open frames so that the surface to be plated would not be obstructed. These frames were loaded into vacuum chambers with pieces of pure aluminum wire connected to electrical terminals. The chamber would be evacuated to a very low level. Once at the required vacuum level was reach a very high level of current was run through the alminum wire causing it to heat up and vaporize. The vaporized alminum would coat everything in the chamber. The very smooth surfaces of the plastic items would come out looking like they were chrome plated everything else had just a dullish aluminum look. The key was matching the size (length and gauge) of the wire to the total surface area you wanted coated. Too thick a coat and you lost the chrome look and to little and it would be transparent.
 
dgc333 said:
FYI, one summer in high school I worked for a company that made plastic ornaments and novelty items many of which were "chrome" plated or partially plated. I worked in the plating area.

The way it was done was the parts were masked as necessary and were mounted on open frames so that the surface to be plated would not be obstructed. These frames were loaded into vacuum chambers with pieces of pure aluminum wire connected to electrical terminals. The chamber would be evacuated to a very low level. Once at the required vacuum level was reach a very high level of current was run through the alminum wire causing it to heat up and vaporize. The vaporized alminum would coat everything in the chamber. The very smooth surfaces of the plastic items would come out looking like they were chrome plated everything else had just a dullish aluminum look. The key was matching the size (length and gauge) of the wire to the total surface area you wanted coated. Too thick a coat and you lost the chrome look and to little and it would be transparent.
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Interesting stuff.....so this would be how the vac. plater in Canada "restores" bezels and what not?
 
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