Whats up guys, so im re-doing my whole interior on my 2003 dodge ram 1500. New carpet, new custom seats, new headliner and the one thing he said he cannot paint good were the door panels. My interior is currently that tan/lightgray color and converting everything to black. I Know out of 'some' experience that painting plastic and painting it good so that it doesnt chip or scratch is nearly impossible. Does anyone know of a way of painting my door panels all black without it getting any chips in the future? Maybe prepping the panel really good and applying a special paint and curing it or something? Please help as im getting the interior done but need to know how to get the panels painted. With out the panels the rest wont matter!! I will post pics!

 

Plastic dye.

 

Thank you for the link. And what should i do? Should i sand prime and sand? Should i get textured finish?

 

If you sand it, you'll lose the factory texture of the plastics. ONLY sand before/after if you want a perfectly smooth glossy finish, but if you want that, why not just use paint? Use a degreaser or paint thinner or something to remove everything from the plastics. This is especially important if you've used armor-all or equivalent on your interior. The plastic must be perfectly clean and dry before using the dye. Once the plastic is free of all foreign materials, you just spray the dye right over it in a few light coats, a lot like painting. The dye seeps into the plastic, changing its color. After it's all dried up again, armor-all it and you're good to go. Any plastic dye should work fine, I just linked to ebay to give you the general idea.

 

Hope you never wiped them down in anything like ArmorAll.

Ive never seen painted or dyed interior pieces that lasted long unless it was a show ride and never gets used. On a daily driver they are bound to get rubbed and scratched.

 

Yeahh i figured... I might just hit up a junk yard and try to find some factory black panels. They dont go for cheap though. We'll see. Ill post up some pics of the before and after madness

 

Look into SEM products. They are the only real choice for changing interior colors in a vehicle. You can find your desired color and texture, and they make an adhesion promoter that's recommended as well.

A quick google will show you other forums where people have done what you're looking for, and almost all use SEM.