PINTO CAR CLUB of AMERICA
Shiny is Good! => Your Project => Topic started by: Henrius on November 16, 2019, 08:08:35 PM
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Plastic disintegrates with sun and time. The worst interior plastic are the side panels in my 1973 Runabout. Cargo scraped the hot plastic in the summer, and damaged it.
A restoration shop patched and painted the pieces, and the LOOK good. But underneath the plastic is cracking.
Could anyone make a styrofoam mold and reproduce the panels? Or laminate them with vinyl covering of some sort?
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There are no reproduction parts for pinto. I will tell you how I dealt with the problem.
Faded plastic an be restored with a heat gun. It is delicate work. If you carefully heat the panels and just as the panels start to become molten the color comes back. This is tricky as you can melt a hole if you use too much heat. I had mine almost done when I melted it and made a sunk in spot.
I solved this problem refinishing them completely. I filled the melted spot with drywall mud and sanded it smooth. This sounds temporary but it has stayed five years. next spay panels with an adhesion promoter. This is a $6 purchase in Home Depot spray can department. Nex buy spray stone also a Depot. I don't remember what the name is. Make it stone....Spray it rock..somethin g like that. This makes a pebbly texture close to the original texture. No one but you will notice the difference. Next go to the auto paint supply and pick the appropriate color. If you don't have a sprayer, you can buy a refillable spray can at Depot. It is a glass jar with a pressure canister attached on the top.
This is not a perfect solution. It looks great but the paint is soft and can scratch off. Perhaps some kind of tough clear coating can be had. Touch-ups are easy, so I spot paint.
Good luck
Bill
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Thanks. I am impressed with your ingenuity. You must have experimented on test panels first?
Did you use a heat GUN to heat the plastic? Some areas are bad, but some are not. Areas were the cargo gouged the dried plastic were bad; other areas not exposed to sun were not.
My restoration guy filled the gouges with something and painted, and it doe not look bad. Trouble is, the old plastic is brittle and a crack through it developed. Guess I could reinforce the back with something.
Met a plastic engineer on a flight one time and commented on this problem. He said the Feds mandated car plastic parts be made biodegradeable after years in the junkyard, and the plastics used were formulated that way!
When I asked if anyone reproduced panels, I meant on a small scale, one on one basis.
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There is also interior plastic paint in a spray can at parts stores. l used it on the panels in the Pintoracer and it looked good and held up well.
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I tested the look by spraying card board. I used a heat gun intended for paint stripping. You may try a hair dryer first. I don't know if is hot enough but heat gun is hard to handle. I do not know anything about mechanics but, I do have a knack for cosmetic improvements. Here are links to a couple other things I developed.
https://www.fordpinto.com/your-project/simple-fat-bumper-fix/ (https://www.fordpinto.com/your-project/simple-fat-bumper-fix/)
https://www.fordpinto.com/general-pinto-talk/chrome-your-plastic-grill/ (https://www.fordpinto.com/general-pinto-talk/chrome-your-plastic-grill/)
Good luck
Bill
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Here is info on a junkyard near Denver that has over 20 pintos. Perhaps Greg can find you the panels you need somewhere in his lot. I am sure you will need to paint them. Shipping may be a chore.
https://www.fordpinto.com/general-pinto-talk/junkyard-near-denver-has-pintos/msg181565/#msg181565