Painting plastic fascia?

[slick84092]

Help! I just bought my daughter a 1994 Saab 9000 CDE. It's in good shape, but the plastic decor piece on the trunk (fascia) has the paint wearing off. Note: this decor panel does NOT have any backlighting of any kind. It merely matches the color bars on the two rear taillight assemblies. This clear plastic piece is painted (on the inside surface) in four horizontal bars, the lower three colors are okay, but the top (dark red) strip/bar is flaking off. At first glance, it looks like water is stuck behind the part. This whole decor piece removes from the back of the trunk lid. The interior painted surface is not smooth, I can't describe it other than "houndstooth"...

How do I go about stripping the loose paint on the top strip, while masking the other three (lower) color bars? What type of paint should I use? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! By the way, Saab wants over $600.00 for a new replacement part, so that's why I'm trying to salvage it!

Thanks,
Slick

[jimmymc]

The problem with this type of plastic...any solvent that you try to use to remove the paint, may attack and soften the plastic. Paint stripper is out of the question, so don't try to use it.

I would try lacquer thinner on a que-tip first on a very small area. If de-solved color shows up on the que-tip and the plastic doesn't soften...you may be able too remove enough of the paint to repaint and save the part.

If lacquer thinner does not soften the paint you will just have to experiment until you find a solvent that will soften the old paint.

Something you might consider...Soft abrasive blasting...like sand blasting but with a very much less agressive media. Mask the areas you don't want to blast first. The area blasted may frost...but painting on the back side should look fine through the clear outside.

If you get as far as repainting the part just mask it and use a spray can of your favorite color. Most spray can paints are lacquer or enamel based...either will work.

All of these solvents and materials are dangerous...If you use them... use all necessary caution.

Good Luck jimmymc

[peeface]

Just spray the whole shebam with Krylon Fusion.

[reidboat]

Late follow up on this but I just did the same job to my 94 Saab 9000 CDE trunk decor panel. $600 at the dealer, and so I figured it out myself. Gitting it off the car had a small trick. There were no screws from inside the trunk so don't bother removing that inner panel. There were two screws externally up by the license plate lights and two holding on the license plate mounting plates. Then the trick is to make sure the bottom edge is loose, stuck on with four 3"L X 3/4"W X 1/4" glue blocks along the lower edge. These are superbly glued to the decor panel and must be gently loosed from the car body with a putty knife. Then when the bottom edge is free the entire panel can slide left or right (about 1/2") to disengage the six clips along the top edge. Once I got the panel off the car I laid it right side up on a bench covered with a soft blanket. Protect the external side of the plastic at all costs before you begin because that is the shiny, pristine visible side. I covered the entire external face with bubble wrap as another protective padding but this was not so good because abrasive blast media got through despite despite my covering all the holes. A better idea would have been to tape off the flat external areas separately with heavy builder's paper, and separately close up the apertures for the license plate lights from the external side before the bubble wrap. Then working on the back side, which is the painted side, I then taped up all the small remaining holes and the larger license plate light hole. There are 11 pieces glued onto the back side for supporting the panel. 6 slide clips along the top, 4 spacer blocks along the bottom and a larger angled plastic mounting bracket for the top screws. These must all be patiently worked off the painted surfaces with a putty knife. But first make an accurately measured diagram of the location of all these blocks including the asymetrical orientation of the upper ones so that they can all re reglued in the exact same locations. I removed mine cold in about an hour but perhaps a heated putty knife would be worth a try since it seems to be a killer thermoset glue. Removing those blocks and then removing the glue from all of them also is the hardest part of the job. Don't crack the panel! The lower blocks had a thick double sided auto body tape against the car. I removed this with a single edge razor blade and replaced it later. Then for the paint work I got Krylon Fusion spray cans, two reds and a black. My yellow stripe was fine. There was a very small black gasket trim along the top edge which I removed and then masked off all the edges of the color areas. I experimented for quite a while with walnut shells and sand and color matching, on a $4 plastic lens out of a 2' X 4' office florescent ceiling fixture, which had the same shape diamond pattern on one side. I actually tried blasting my decor paint off with the walnt shells, using my small 40 lb. sand pot, but could not get it satisfactorily clean and so I did it all again with fine sand. And as I found with the experimenting I could see no difference in external finished appearance. The Krylon reds weren't quite right and so I did a fine mist with the brighter red first and then a few minutes later finished with the darker burgundy. Likewise a black mist for the top stripe and then heavy burgundy to get that colr. My experimenting and practice helped me get a pretty good color match but in retrospect. I'd have gotten a better job, a finer mist and a more patient color match by spraying out some of the colors into a cup, then bench mixing them to load into my small touch up spray gun. Mask and spray the colors separately. After an overnight paint drying I glued on my 11 blocks with 3M 4200 fast set polyurethane caulk, according to my layout diagram and bought new double sided tape at the auto parts store. Fast set 4200 I let set up at least 48 hours, regular set maybe a week. A strong enough thermoset glue would be instant. Then it was ready to install.

All kinds of internet searching couldn't find anyone that had done this job. I hope my story might help someone else.

[GreyGoose006]

this thread is over three years old.
please dont post in threads older than a few months.
thank you.

[curtis73]

closed