How to quickly update a faded car exterior plastic

When operating a car, especially if it parks on the street, the color of the exterior plastic parts of its body under the influence of sunlight dims over time. Plastic fades in the sun or, as is customary to say, burns out. To qualitatively update the color of a car in such a situation, you can only paint it again, but it is expensive and relatively troublesome.


Resourceful motorists have found another, very quick and practically inexpensive way to update the color of burnt plastic elements of the car body (bumpers, linings, fenders, etc.), provided that they are made of soft plastic. Of the devices you will need only a conventional gas burner equipped with a cylinder.

Let's see how this method works on the example of resuscitation of the color of an unpainted plastic overlay on the body of a Honda CR-V crossover burnt out in the sun. Initially, the part was black, but under the influence of sunlight it changed its color and became unappealingly pale gray.


The work is performed as follows:
1. Light the burner, bring its torch to the plate and begin to evenly move the flame along its surface. It is categorically not recommended to remove the part from the body before this, since in the free position from heating it can change shape. The main thing at work is not to overdo it with heating the surface of the plastic and do not keep the torch in place in order not to melt the patch.

2. First, the edges of the lining are heated, since they warm up longer, and only then its middle.


3. When a lining surface is heated by a torch, its color changes very quickly to that which was before fading. It becomes noticeable almost immediately.

4. Thus, progressively, starting from the edges and not holding the torch of the burner in one place, they warm up the entire surface of the plastic part. After being treated with the flame of the burner, the cover again turns black and looks, if you do not particularly look closely, like new.

With a certain amount of dexterity, all the elements of the car body made of soft plastic can be torched by a gas burner in literally half an hour. This method works, most likely, because with the rapid heating of the plastic, only its upper layer, having a thickness of only a few microns, melts, as a result of which the lower layers not affected by fading become visible.

By the way, this method allows not only to update faded plastic, but also to make small scratches on it pre-processed with fine sandpaper.

Video how to update faded plastic car body elements: