Anyone painted their fender trims ? (The black plastic pieces on the fenders)

A friend of me keep telling me it would look good to get the fender trims painted to match the vehicle color.

Anyone ever tried that ? Does it look good ?

Is tere any photos somewhere of a Chili red Mini with the trim painted ?

 

Ok, sorry for that , I just found a SUPER OLD thread about that
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...hread.php?t=41

 

Picture of my first MINI:



If you do it, make sure you buy NEW trim pieces. Any soap, armor all, ANYTHING on the trim pieces and they're ruined. All the prep in the world won't get that crap out of them and your paint will crack. They're dirt cheap (like under $75 for all the pieces).

Make sure the shop you take it to is familiar with painting plastic, and let them know that you want it to be smooth and glossy (Will require sanding). A good job will be expensive, but it looks great.

 

Damn that looks good. What happened to it, did you sell it?

 

Someone ran a red light and hit me. The insurance company totaled it because of all the mods (Too expensive to fix):







More non-accident pics:

 

+1 on getting new trim pieces, but keep in mind that you're not going to be able to get all the pieces you need for $75 unless you already have the body-coloured aero kit (door sills, front and rear bumpers).

If you have the regular black factory trim pieces, there's something like 14 trim pieces you have to buy, and when I ordered them from PelicanParts, I seem to recall the total being in the $400-500 range.

Unless, of course, you're *only* interesting in making the wheel trim body-coloured, and want to leave the sills and front/rear bumper lips black.

 

My understanding was that he was looking for the fender trim pieces being painted body color. The pieces on the bumpers are molded into the bumper on the aero kit, thus when you get the aero kit you either paint them black to match the trim or body color and paint the trim pieces.

The *Fender* trim pieces are fairly cheap, I paid 18-20 a piece for them.

 

I knew what you were talking about, I just didn't want the OP (or anyone else reading the thread) to think that they could go from a regular factory setup to something like your car (where there's *no* black trim at all) for $75 in new trim pieces plus the cost of painting them.

For someone that already has the sills and bumpers in body colour, painting the arch pieces to match is almost a no-brainer if you like the look. On the other hand, going from the regular factory bodywork to a completely colour-matched setup is significantly more expensive.

 

Rustyboy
First good to hear your safe and not hurt!
But my heart aches looking at that beautiful red mini. Hey she still sexy from the rear when you kinda dont see the front end, condoleneces.

As for that plastic black trim, I personally like it. Not saying painted is worse, but dunno that cheap trim gives contrast to the wheels imo =P

 

Indeed, you need the new side skirts (Black plastic). They're expensive OEM, I sold mine for 75+shipping.

That's the bulk of the cost. The pieces for the bumpers aren't that much.

 

The accident was November of 2005, so it's been almost 3 years now. I was fine, my arm had a burn from the airbag deployment and I was sore, but other than that fine.

The car protected me, did it's job. Everyone that saw the accident thought I was dead, the Jeep that hit me looked like it hit a wall at 90 MPH. It's bumper was across the intersection, and it was spun completely around in the opposite direction.

Just one of those situations that you look back on and learn from. I stopped to grab a bottle of water on the way to work that day. If I hadn't, he wouldn't have hit me. There was a pedestrian in the x-walk. If there hadn't been, I would have been able to avoid him.

A great example of all the elements coming together at the wrong time.

 

If you're replacing all of the black factory trim, there's no single piece that's godawful expensive - it's just that there are so many of them:

Long piece for the front bumper ($32.08)
Two "doglegs" from the front bumper to the front wheel arch ($18.45 each)
Four arch pieces for the front wheels ($16.00 each)
Two Sills ($70.65 each)
Two rear wheel arch pieces ($20.00 each)
Two "doglegs" from the rear arches to the rear bumper piece ($21.00 each)
Long rear bumper piece ($42.45)

So, if you already have colour-matched bumpers and sills, and only need the four front arch pieces and the two rear arch pieces, that's $104 total (from PelicanParts), but if you need all 14 pieces, the total is $390.73 (again, from PelicanParts).

On the plus side, if you order new arch pieces, you can get the "Euro" versions that don't have the rectangular reflector cutouts that the US versions have.

 

good info Scott. Thanks. Anyone know the rough cost of getting the arches painted from a body shop? Clearly this will vary from shop to shop, but a starting point would be sweet.

 

This shouldn't be an issue if you sand and prime, right?