Painting Plastic

[Ron Vroom]

Anyone out there with experience to share about painting plastic fenders on an ATV. My research leads me to believe there are 2 routes. One is to do all the prep work, primner and use a spray gun, the other is to use rattle cans after prepping and priming. Since my ATV is always garaged, does this help determine what I can get by with.

[DrKen]

I can't speak to atv fenders but can to flexible bumpers. There is a additive that you add to the paint for flexibility. It's darn expensive and once you open it, you have to use it within 30 days or so. As another option, there are all surface spray cans from rustoleoum out now that are formulated to use on plastic. These probably have the additive built in and may be your best option. No matter what you use it will scratch easily. Just the nature of the use of atv's. You could also use skins to protect the plastic. Usually these are camo.

[motley man]

the color in atv plastic is in the plastic, as posted before skins work good

[Jeremy airjer W]

Krylon makes a "plastic" paint as well, I think its called Fusion. We used Regular krylon for custom painted vinyl and it worked very well. It has MIK and MEK (methyl-iso-keytones & methyl-ethyl-ketones excuse the spelling) which are supposed to be good for plastic adhesion.

There are also plastic adhesion promoters that you can buy in a spray can as well. Kind of a plastic primer.

If you get the professional stuff to spray out of a gun just tell the autobody jobber what you are doing and they'll set you up with the right flex additive for the paint your using.