Bringing New Life to Your Interior
It's no secret that stock plastic is as exciting as your mom's mini-van; and Armor All can only make it so shiny. A great way to get rid of the stock look in your interior and still have the factory fitment is to smooth and paint the existing plastics. Looking back 6 or 7 years ago, paint and body shops went into fits trying to get paints and primers to stick to the ABS plastic surfaces used on most trucks.
Flash-forward to present day, the chemical industry has caught up with the plastic technology. Special adhesive promoters, two-part epoxies, and primers have made painting plastics a relative piece of cake. Gone are the days of throwing a dash cover over your plastics, or heaven-forbid: busting out the tweed. Now you can bring your custom paintjob inside of your cab. This process, while not extremely difficult, is much like many truck projects. Taking your time will yield huge dividends.
For our Project Sinatra F-150, we chose the shop that originally performed the custom paintwork, South County Customs in Lake Forest, California. Talking with shop owner Max Gilmore, we discussed which pieces would look best painted, then we threw around some ideas for those pesky A-pillars. His idea was to shave them. After explaining to us that shaving plastic wasn't a big deal anymore, we jumped at the idea and thought you, too, would enjoy seeing how the interior was made over with some color.
Don't forget, you spend most of your time inside your truck and making that aspect look good should be a top priority.
We arrived at South County Customs in Lake Forest, California, with one piece of the interior smoothed and painted from the truck's paint makeover (see Vol. 33, No. 8, pg. 158 for that story), but the plan was to really add some blue to the interior. Javier began by removing the to-be painted pieces from the dash. These pieces included: the top driver side plastic panel, gauge cluster frame panel, top dash panel, A-pillars, window switch plates, and front dash panel; including a 12V panel and cup holder panel. | 
The plastic panels were set on the prep table, where the needed parts to get them looking great were gathered. Then, Javier grabbed Rage Gold filler, Mar-Glass, Bulldog adhesion promoter, acetone, 320-grit sandpaper, 600-grit wet/dry sandpaper, sanding discs, and Lord Fusor 102 two-part plastic cosmetic adhesive. |
Before any prepping or painting began, Javier began the interesting process of shaving the plastic. We chose to shave the grab handle holes on the A-pillars; the truck is lowered and not much help was needed to get in. Despite the convex shape and large diameter, Javier was certain he could make the A-pillars smooth. He started by grinding down and roughing up the plastic. | |