Interior Paints and Plastics

Hello all,

On the subject of plastics on an old car, especially ~50 years old, the plasticizers added to the resin upon molding leach out in time. This is accelerated with heat and sunlight. One way to preserve what's left is to clean and paint the substrate help locking what's remaining in the plastic. Plus the paint can rejuvenate the appearance. In ABQ, there's a Napa store dedicated to just paint. They can mix any paint and stick in an aerosol can for you. They have an extremely nice and rugged interior paint. I've used this on my Grand Marquis steering wheel where the dye on the leather has worn through and this paint is tough as nails as it resists typical cleaning agents, grease, oils in hands, sunlight, heat, cold, just about anything really typically found or used inside an automobile.

Even though this car was housed inside for the majority of its life you can see the discolouration of the kick panel, especially where the edges were tucked under another interior piece, in this case the dash edges.

Sometimes Napa doesn't have the paint colour code you need. In this case they didn't. It's light Ivy Gold. The upside to this is usually on the reverse (hidden) side of an interior piece depending on where it was will be the correct virgin colour. We found the best piece and gave it to them for colour matching.

And match they did. Bloody brilliant! They hit that one on the nose. It is important to scrub with hot water and soap the panels before painting especially with a Scotch Brite pad. Not only does it clean the obvious contamination off but it also literally exfoliates the loose plastic resin off that the plasticizers left behind so the paint will stick to a solid substrate.

Always save the colour formula for later. It comes in a 12 oz can and runs about 25 dollars per can. But for convenience and durability it's a more than fair bargain.

The colour is off from the camera (flash) verses the first picture (no flash). But it does match incredibly well. Plus the Ivy Gold paint is naturally almost iridescent.

Did the back side to help seal in the goodness . Ford glued the sound deadener to the kick panels. I scrubbed what I could off, but didn't want to risk damage to the plastic unnecessarily so I left the stubborn bits on.

As a side note one of the side panels there is a replacement from a blue interior car as mine had a chunk broken off it. Paint covers well.

Cheers