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Painting the Chrome

4K views 23 replies 12 participants last post by  JimsterG 
#1 ·
So, coming the 26th I'm going to be doing an exhaust and coilovers on my 2012 Ti and I wanted to do a few other visual things to it while it's in the garage and we're working on it. Basically, I wanted to black out my tail lights using the Nite Shade stuff that was talked about in a recent topic but that seems relatively straight forward.

I also wanted to get rid of basically all the chrome on the car. I wanted to black out the chrome on the fog light bezels, the front whiskers, the badges and the chrome under the windows on the door but I'm just not sure what the best way to go about it would be since i've never done any car painting before.

I guess my question would be, how do I go about doing all of this? What would be the best way? Any tips would be appreciated since this is really the first time i've painted stuff on a car before.
 
#2 ·
Tape it and plasti-dip it. The chrome beltline is attached, removing it would give you some nastiness underneath. So, just tape it off and plasti-dip it.

That or you can cover it in vinyl, but you'd have to cut it to fit.
 
#6 ·
I've personally done everything except for the badges, as I can't decide if I want to paint them or just get rid of them. My whiskers are the only thing that are vinyl. I actually remove every piece of chrome trim to wrap it in vinyl, but even after hitting it with the heat gun, after a while the corners started pulling up. So I pulled them all back off and Plast-dipped them. Haven't had any issues since, including the fog light bezels. So my advice would be to Plasti-dip them.




Ugh, look at those sad silver wheels! Sorry for the older pics...
 
#7 ·
So, it sounds like from the answers I got I should at least do the whiskers in vinyl. Now, how would I go about doing that? What do I need? Any good tutorials around?

I haven't decided what I'm going to do about the belt line but for the badges I'm either going to remove them entirely or Plasti dip them since that seems to be the easiest way.

If I do decide to paint the fog light bezels or any other part how should I go about that? I haven't really done much painting before, especially on a car.
 
#10 ·
I used plastidip
Looks pretty sweet! Eventually I'll plasti-dip mine as well, but that looks great! Probably easier to do that than remove the chrome too.
 
#13 ·
I think going the PlastiDip route should be easy. My only worry is that I don't want it to look rubbery which I know can sometimes happen.

I was thinking about ordering a wheel kit from dipyourcar.com to black out my wheels to see how it looks so I can decide if I want to powdercoat them later on or get new wheels altogether.

As far as the vinyl goes I'm still pretty lost on what to do or how to go about all of that.
 
#15 ·
Vinyl is just like a sticker. Cut it over size and stick it from the middle out. Stretch it a little to follow the curves and heat will help it form to the curves. Just trim the excess with a knife. It's cheap enough to learn as you go for little pieces like the whiskers. Just don't cut into anything below it while trimming and you'll do fine
 
#17 ·
I did it about a month and half ago, and it's help up great. I do plan to add a few coats and clear coat them in the near future, it seems a bit hard to keep them clean. I might try a magic eraser to see it it will get them clean without screwing up the dip, too. But no nicks or scratches that I can see.
 
#18 ·
I paid for chrome so I'm keeping it. My last 2 cars had zero chrome on them and they look sort of old-school compared to the Focus now. On some cars black wheels look ok in my opinion. It takes me back to the era of wearing white socks together with baggie shorts. Some people do it, but it just looks dorky today. But it's only my opinion.......
 
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