Ever since we picked the dark green Forester in 2000 because it was the advertised special, I’ve gotten grief over it from my better half. Stephanie likes color; and lots of it. Well, I actually do too, at least more so than I used to. A few gray Pacific North West winters will do that, at least to us. She’s been itching for something brighter to stand out among the hordes of other green Subarus, but given its age, I just couldn’t ever see spending the bucks on a real paint job, or even a vinyl wrap. But Plasti Dip may be the solution.
(it says that another video is more current, but that one does not really show the full process as well)
Eric Van Buren first mentioned it here awhile back, and then I checked out the You Tube videos. With over 5 million views, I’m obviously coming to this party late (as usual). But it really doesn’t seem all that hard, and if color fatigue sets in, one just peels it off. The Forester sure be easier to find in a parking lot on a gray day.
Yesterday I was fantasizing about a Volvo 245 Weber-fed project car. It would have to have the US front and I thought about looking into Plast-Dip to see if it is cheaper than a cheap paint job. Today I log onto CC and see a 245 hearse and a Plasti-Dip article. CC effect double whammy!
well, my favorite BMW 2002 is the Inca Orange…I love the Mercedes crash test cars in their orange hue, especially the S-class. The Lamborghini Diablo VT looked great in orange. I really think it is an unnecessary maligned color. I happen this bimmer especially the orange complemented by the black rims. The 1M would look great in that color.
I’ve used plasti-dip for things like tool handles and to seal up battery packs for R/C boats, and the stuff has pretty harsh solvents in it. I’d guess it won’t harm the paint itself but wouldn’t it strip any wax or protective coating completely off of the paint?
Yes it would likely remove any wax if you peel it off, but you really should try and remove that wax before you apply the Plastidip for best adhesion.
Nothing says muscle car louder than orange,not sure about the Forester in orange,blue or green would be my choice if the feature car was mine
Funny you bring this up now, I have been researching it for sprucing up my old Honda CRV. I am just concerned it will look like crap up close. I really like the Orange on that BMW, I wonder if that is a stock plasti-dip color or something custom mixed?
The CRV is old, has over 200k miles on it, so it isn’t something we are really going to sell because resale value is already too low to bother. But it is in really nice condition, nice enough that we drive it pretty much daily. But it is boring sliver, the roof paint is very faded and even flaking off, and the hood is covered in bug gut marks and chips. And the black plastic is fading to grey. So I was looking at using bedliner to cover the roof and lower half of the car, including all the black plastic. Then I thought… why not bedliner the whole thing? They make bedliner in colors now too. But thats both expensive and permanent. And requires a lot of prep work. Plasti-dip doesn’t, just spray it on. I think it will even cover the black plastic, so I could do black on the lower half and the roof, orange on the sides.
Anyone ever try it in person? See it up close? Any opinions? And yes I know it’s stupid to fix up a 12yo Honda with 200k miles, I just like my cars to look nice and its a relatively cheap project!
I should have taken some close-ups. Obviously, it has a very slight “nubby” texture, as one would expect. That’s why gloss is out of the question; it has to be matte. Maybe not everyone’s cup of tea, but I rather like the matte-texture look.
I used spray-on bedliner on the hood of my 2000 Jeep Cherokee and it couldn’t have been easier. I wiped down the hood with mineral spirits and then scuffed the paint with 100 grit sandpaper. I followed the directions on the spray can and I was done in about an hour. The finish looks a lot better than the beat up paint that was on there before and it cost me less than 12 dollars. Still looks good 6 months later. The color (black) hasn’t faded or peeled yet. Good luck.
Like any coating the final result depends heavily on the application. If you do the really light coats like the guy at dip your car recommends it does come out very smooth. Certainly not as smooth as a high quality paint job though.
Plastidip themselves does not offer that orange but the guy at dip your car does offer mixed colors like that orange already thined for spraying.
It does work great on plastic trim, I did some of the trim on my Crown Vic with it, though I purposely went a bit heavier to give it some texture.
Thanks Eric, that is where I bought the dip for emblems too. Did it stick well to the plastic over the long haul? Does it basically look like the original plastic, or is it obviously painted over?
That is one problem with bedliner, no one can confirm how well it will stick to my plastic bumpers and fender flares. I would hate for it to start flaking off.
Well it has been a year and a half or so since I did my the trim on my CV and it has held up to light pressure washing w/o coming off. If one didn’t know you couldn’t tell it wasn’t factory. Now I did do it fast and heavy to give a little texture like is often found on rubber trim strips. However applying it so it is really smooth is very durable as I’ll explain below.
How I got into it was with my Robotics team ( http://www.Tahomarobtics.org ). That season the game was to play basket ball with a Nerf like ball. We chose to use a flywheel to launch the ball. One of the reoccurring rules in FIRST Robotics ( http://www.usfirst.org ) is that your machine can not damage the field or game pieces. Weight is always a consideration so we want to minimize the weight of a given component. However when using a flywheel to shoot an object the energy stored as inertia in the flywheel determines how much energy you have to transfer to the object you are trying to propel. After trying a number of off the shelf wheels we determined that we needed to make our own wheel. We used a piece of aluminum tube for the “rim” and some plate to create the “spokes”. That allowed us to concentrate the weight at the rim to maximize the inertia it contributed. The problem was that it was a bit too slippery.
So the quest was on to find some sort of “traction material” that would give grip but not tear up the ball. We had used the dip style Plastidip to color code our tools so I started doing a little research. That is when I found dipyourcar. I ended up going to the local big box hardware store and found a can of the aerosol. I carefully followed the recommendations for doing your car to get a smooth finish.
It did provide a noticeable increase in traction w/o damaging the ball. Now the wheel was spinning at ~5000 rpm when a ball that was not spinning was introduced. The Plastidip did not peel at all when subject to that force. Someone else decided that the grip was still not enough so they put a strip of double stick foam mounting tape around the wheel. Of course the added traction of that was very short lived. I was able to peel off that tape w/o damaging the Plastidip underneath it.
That experience proved to me that it was a very durable coating, when applied right, so once spring hit I tried it on my trim. As I mentioned above it has lasted very well so far and if it does go bad it is not hard, nor that expensive to peel it off and re-apply. Now I wouldn’t take a car through a brush style car wash nor pressure wash it with the tip an inch or so from the surface. However I was able to pressure wash the things that like to grow in the crevices of an automobile in the PNW in the winter w/o damage.
Excellent information, thanks very much Eric! It does sound pretty durable. I do not use brush car washes or pressure washers, so not an issue. I do take that car to the full service brushless car wash but just because I am lazy and don’t care about that car’s old worn paint anyways. I could handwash it, its pretty easy to wash. I think plasti-dip might be the way to go here, even just considering that if it looks terrible i can peel it off. If I sand my car and use bedliner and it looks like crap it is not easy to remove, and even if I remove the base is now all sanded.
Thanks. I want the matte look so either product is fine there, and they make bedliner in custom colors too so basically the same there too.
Interesting about the Cherokee… one can did the entire hood? I was planning to get a gallon for the black and a gallon for the color, thats still $150 or so. But bedliner doesn’t have to be sprayed, you can roll it on and it is self-leveling so it comes out smooth that way too.
I have plasti-dipped my GTI emblems, and while it works fine, it wasn’t a great finish I would want on the whole car. And it was a PITA, that crap gets all over everything when sprayed. I think if I wanted the whole car dipped I would probably have to take it to a place with the spray booth and equipment to lay it down smoothly.
Yes, one can did the whole hood. I thought about rolling it on, but the spray can looked easy and it was cheap. The hood looked horrible, so I didn’t think I had anything to lose. I don’t know what thickness I’ve got, but it’s a pretty good build up. I sprayed it on just like spray paint. I did a coat, waited about half an hour then repeated. I think I got 3 coats out of the can. It starts spitting a little when the can’s almost empty though. I cleaned up the wet globs with a paper towel and let it dry. As for sticking to plastic, I haven’t tried it yet. I was going to try it out sometime, but haven’t had the opportunity yet.
Hmm. Maybe this would rejuvenate my paint-challenged Matrix.
Absolutely but it will require a fair amount effort and isn’t all that cheap if you have to buy a sprayer on top of the material. So it might be cheaper, and certainly easier to drop it off at Maaco when they are running a special.
In Paul’s case it would likely be the perfect solution. It sounds like the paint on the Subie is in good condition so being able to change the color to one that creates marital bliss now, but can be removed to preserve the value when it comes time to sell could be just the ticket. I’m guessing that Paul may already have a suitable sprayer and if he doesn’t he can surely find a way to put it to use in the future.
That’s the idea. But I wonder if my big airless house-paint sprayer will work ok? Maybe get a smaller nozzle, or….
The Dip Your Car kits are like $250-300 including a sprayer. So if you have makeshift booth to spray in thats pretty cheap. I think they recommend using a special sprayer for it so not any type will work. But if you have a compressor you can buy the proper gun for like $30 or so.
The one that dip your car sells is just one of the Wagner airless sprayers you can get at Home Depot. So yeah it is likely that the one that you have will work Paul. You might however want to try it out on the side of the old Ford to get a feel for it and see how it lays out though. That way you could could buy a qt and get approval for the color and how it looks before spending the money on enough to do a entire car and then have Stephanie say she didn’t like the color or the resulting texture. Of course there is always going to be some risk of her disliking the finished result but a test panel should lower that risk.
In order to sell my wife’s Datsun B210 I had to cover all of the rust holes on the car. So I bought some thin sheet aluminum at the hardware store, pop riveted in place (after trimming), then painted the patched areas with black 3M spray undercoating. Dynomite! Got $500 for the POS.
Something is missing here…..a matching trailer.
(Photo: asfaltwerker/machinist)
I dipped the chrome trim on my Electra to give it more of a t-type look. Never done wheels or an entire car.
The stuff can be a lifesaver for Avalanches and Xterras with chalky plastic.
Thats exactly what I want it for… chalky plastic on my CRV. I am going to try it, see how it looks on a small piece. I have some grey left over from a incorrect order they didn’t want back. I guess I can practice with that.