Restore Your Car’s Trim While It’s Off For Paint

If you’re doing the job right, you’ve at least taken off the basic trim before repainting your car. And if you’ve come this far, you owe it to yourself to treat those bits to the same level of attention as the body. After all, why bother with new paint if the old trim is going to let it down?

We recently prepped our ’93 Mustang convertible to get a fresh coat of its original Bright Calypso Green metallic, repairing some damage on the passenger door in the process. It only made sense to pull the exterior mirrors, greenhouse moldings, A-pillar trims, cowl vent, and luggage rack frame as well to get a better paint job.

The pieces that came off were a mix of metal and plastic parts that once been finished in a uniform shade of satin black. Over the course of 30 years, the metal had lost virtually all its paint and the plastic had faded to gray.

Prepping the parts started with a shower of Eastwood Pre Green Painting Prep. This biodegradable, non-solvent cleaner does a better job of breaking down organic contaminants (aka, road grime) and is gentler on the plastic trim than traditional solvent-based Pre Painting Prep.

Once initial cleaning was done, we hit the metal door caps and wiper arms with a 180/220/320-grit series of sanding with a dual-action sander. This step removed what was left of the original paint as well as light surface rust that had begin to take hold. Back to bare metal, we cleaned the metal thoroughly using regular Pre Painting Prep. To get a proper bond between the metal parts and the new color coat, we shot 2K Duraspray epoxy primer on these pieces.

With everything prepped, we reached for SEM Trim Black spray paint. The can claims it’s the industry standard, and based on the results we wouldn’t argue it. This high-solids trim paint looks like the factory finish on so many vehicles, providing the perfect OEM look to the finished pieces.

Once the car came back from the paint shop, we masked the few pieces of trim that had been left in place (not worth risking damage by removing them, in this case) and got to work painting. Upon reinstalling everything, it was immediately clear what a difference it made restoring these at the same time. The whole car looks like new again. See for yourself in the video here.