Another set of (self-)painted bumperettes
 

Did these this weekend. Spent about $50 on primer, paint, clearcoat and sandpaper from expresspaint.com They had a hell of a time figuring out my paint code (I sent them exactly what it said under my hood), but Dark Teal Metallic just didn't compute to them. They did have it listed, but in German. The match isn't perfect, but is close enough.

Rather than sand off all the little bumps, I put down about 4 layers of primer and then sanded the primer down, shot more primer and then sanded that some more. I figured that sanding primer would go more quickly than sanding rubber. I wet sanded them in the sink, with just a trickle running. Made clean up really easy. There's a little more orange peel than I'd like, so I'll probably take them off in a couple weeks, sand them with 1,000 grit and go at them with a buffing wheel. If I mess them up, I've got plenty of clear left. Oddly, I used nearly a whole can of color though.

one more shot

Nice! I also did my bumperettes myself and was pretty impressed with the end result. I did the "sand the rubber to death" method and it took a LONG time as I was doing it by hand. I must have sanded EACH bumperette for 2 hours... a bit here a bit there....

overall, the painted bumperettes is an excellent cheap mod as it just makes the rear end look so much cleaner. Cheap to do and pays off big time visually.

rubbing compunt makes world of difference....give it a try

Great Job!Can you post a picture of the materials you used? Also did you use any SEM adhesion promoter? :cheers:

I went the whole route with the paintscratch products incluing the Adhesion prime and flexible prime. They came out great but 6 mo later it looks like a spider built a web on one. I have to remove it and light sand and base coat, clear and coumpound again. And hope that it was just a fluke,

Looks nice!

I keep meaning to do this mod and will definitely use your idea of using lots of primer and sanding that instead of the rubber..

Didn't use any adhesion promoter, just whatever primer they recommended. It looks like the clear coat stuck to my car cover (the clear plastic window for the lic plate) in a couple spots, so now I've got some chips in the clear coat. (haven't parked it on the street in months, so I know it's not from contact with other vehicles). I probably put the clear coat on too thick too, so it's probably more brittle than it should be. Color coat still looks fine, so at some point I'll sand down the clear and re-clear coat it.