Painting Plastic Cars

I'm thinking of painting my car and wonder if anyone who has painted their plastic body panels can offer any insight. Can you share what system / products you've used? How is the paint holding up? Did you essentially follow the process outlined in the GTS manual?

Finally, if you had it to do over again would you paint the car or have it wrapped at considerable expense?

Thanks for any ideas / feedback.

Jim

Several guys have beautiful paint jobs on their cars, some are fiberglass and some are plastic. They can speak to how, why, etc.

I have wanted to paint mine (especially after my wife saw Eric's blue #62 with the graphics and made an unkind comparison to my beat up school car). After looking at the beating mine took in four days on the track, I decided painting was way in the future. I decided to buff up the old girl (no not my wife). I did some wet sanding on the worst scuffs and got my car polisher out with rubbing compound. After burning out two buffers and seriously shortening the life on a third, I got acceptable results on the hood and both front fenders. Marginal results on the other panels due to carpel buffer syndrome. I think I need a proper auto buffer and some industial grade buffing compound. Then finishing it off with the orbital buffer won't be such a job. The panels will buff out to a nice high gloss. Based on the buffing effort, I'd guess the shine will stand up with little maintenance. It looks like a different car and my wife has promised not to make any more rude remarks if I'll stop living in the garage. I think it will look great at little actual out of pocket expense, especially after I add some of Eric's super graphics to give it some bling :naughty:
By the way, acetone can be used carefully to get the deep scratches/gouges out as it disolves the plastic at a controllable rate. This also has weight saving implications (no not my weight) :uhoh:

Just my :2cents:

Mike

Thanks Mike. I've actually considered doing the same thing. Making the plastic shine and then do some work with decals. When I was looking for some plastic to make a new front spoiler the plastics place I went to had this stuff ---> http://www.novuspolish.com/ It comes in different compounds. There are certain parts of my car that still have "gloss" and seem to show that the plastic probably can be made to shine almost like paint. And one thing that makes me hesitate is how nice a white car can look. I remember the Porsches at the Sebring test and thought they looked cool. Just a little color accent and some black trim. Although, if the Panoz looked like the Porsche I would probably like that too. How the paint would hold up is a concern. After every track event I have rubber wedged everywhere. I bought some super soft tires for little money that seem to pick up everything on the track. You can see where rubber has lashed the lower fender behind the rear tires. Funny story, I got a "Red Meatball" at Homestead. When I went to the box the guy radioed the corner and he said "they said your car was smoking and things were flying off of it". I was picking up every peice of rubber on the track and flinging it. I passed a couple Corvettes and I swear they hit their brakes when I moved in front of them. :icon16:

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/463705126_jJxni-L.jpg

http://jmimac351.smugmug.com/photos/463716341_TJpi7-L-1.jpg

http://photos.smugmug.com/photos/463722340_whE4s-L.jpg

last time I priced a full car wrap it was less then 2500. I would never paint a car again.... The paint gets ruined. And to tell the truth, both cars have been repaired after crashes using spray paint from the hardware store. It looks good enough. its a 50/50 rule with a race car in my book. 50ft. and 50 mph is all it has to look good!!!! I have rivets holding the bodywork together all over. Who wants to replace bodywork every time it cracks.

Jim,
I got to get me some of those tires, no body hits the brakes for me! That is a great story. Al Lamb races GT2 in SCCA in a Black GTS, looks like Darth Panoz. The Porsche Cup guys generally give him a lot of "racing room" after they told him his car looked like a $40,000 bowling ball and he said theirs looked like $150,000 bowling pins! He can seriously drive it.

I actually see very few white race cars, but like those Porsches, I really like the look. Now that I've got most of the front shined up, I'm liking my GTRA looks way more. After buffer recovery therapy, I'll get after the rest of it. The worst is done (I pray). If I were going to a full color change, I'd definately seriously consider the wrap. I've had the same rubber beating you have. I can't see the expense or effort of a paint job if it will be 50/50 after a few track days. I am willing to do the sweat equity as I think buffing will hold up better and look fine. With graphics, more than fine. Like your Cobra, I have a couple of cars with great paint, but they are fragile and high maintenance under far less abuse.

Thanks for the polish tip. That ABS is tuff stuff. I think you actually need to generate a little heat in it to get results any time soon.

Mike

The rubber marks come off of the wrap really easy too.

If we didn't opt for the Pensek painted car I was gonig to do a Fying Tigers fighter plane theme :)

Our paint is holding up perfectly for a race car... whoever painted this thing did it right and probably baked it.

Penski had some kind of secret (unfair advantage) as both your car and Kel's look as if newly painted. The details in the door jams and seams look perfect. The Penski cars pictured in their driving event looked the same. The only Penski cars I've ever seen that look bad have been recently wrecked. The Captain knows.

Mike

The paint jobs are far from perfect... not even close, but fine for track cars and the paint is holding up which is all that matters to me.

It doesn't hold a candle to the re-paint I recently did on my Z06.

Kel's car and my car were normal driving school cars that were pulled into the Penske fleet at the last minute and given a quick painjob to look like the normal Penske fleet cars when they needed more cars. I think they both spent 1 summer as "penske cars"; they were not normal fleet cars. My car originated from the Sebring school.

They did get a good going through by the Penske folks so I've had to do very little in terms of fixing it over the first year, and now that we re-did the whole car it's moot anyway.

There is a wrap place in Daytona that has done Grand Am cars, etc. I've sent them a request for a quote and I'll share it with you guys - if they respond. Part of my concern was finding a place that's done race cars so they "get it". I figure I'd have about $1k in paint anyway so if the wrap can come in competitively then it probably makes sense. For a car that's 99% of the time in a garage the 3M stuff they use should last a looong time.

http://www.hawkeyedaytona.com/

Check with a small local sign shop that does wraps. Lots of places do them now. You'll find a better deal. The place that did my trucks and my Panoz gets $10/ft for the wrap.

Check with a small local sign shop that does wraps. Lots of places do them now. You'll find a better deal. The place that did my trucks and my Panoz gets $10/ft for the wrap.

Did that include artwork?

There is alot of cars that have really nice paint jobs and they are on plastic or other "Non Metal" Pieces. The paint jobs come out great!

Check with a small local sign shop that does wraps. Lots of places do them now. You'll find a better deal. The place that did my trucks and my Panoz gets $10/ft for the wrap.

$10/ft? I would have thought you paid him 10 bucks. Jimmy goes down! Jimmy hurt! :rofl:

Any body shop can paint the panels. They add lots of flex to the paint same as painting plastic bumpers....works fine.

Panoz no longer has WHITE body panels they are all from a new supplier and come in flat black now....ugh. We just painted two cars red color sanded them look like production cars. Takes a while to remove the body parts but not too hard. Use aviation fastners with nyloc nuts for reassembly so you keep things tight w/o overstressing the plastic.

Cost to paint the cars and repair lots of cracks etc was about $2250 each (paint alone was $700). You could get a lesser job cheaper, though.

Kevin (GTS & GTRA)