Rotary polish on non-painted plastic bumber?

[rjsdsu]

Hi all,

First let me say thank you to such a great community. I was able to make a "very worn looking" '03 Jeep Grand Cherokee look amazing from the various topics in this forum.

My Jeep has plain grey (taupe) plastic bumbers, which look very good now that I have taken your advice and thoroghly cleaned them and applied Pearl. FYI, I love Pearl and it has lasted 2 months so far on my bumbers and interior.

I am having quite a bit of fun detailing my Jeep and was wondering if using my rotary with some polish will do much/anything to improve the finish of my plastic bumpers/trim. Not that they really need it, but I'm going to go clean and treat them again with Pearl and considering a light polish after I re-clean. Any point in doing this?

RJ

[Don M]

Just my opinion, but the plastic isn't going to react like paint does with a rotary and polish, so you'd be better off staying with the cleaning and protection process you are already doing.

[parttimer]

pictures of said trim please.

[KMdef9]

Polish won't do anything but possibly absorb into the plastic, and you'd have to clean it all over again.

Polish works on paint because it levels out scratches, leaving a shiny surface. You plastic bumper is obviously not paint, so it wont get leveled off like a paint would. If it was scratched, maybe an aggressive compound and pad combo *might* do something, but I haven't seen or heard of anyone doing that, yet.

IMO if your happy with the results of Pearl, I'd stick with it. If you want more than a coating can offer, I think your only option is to paint them.

[rjsdsu]

Thank you! I'll just stick with what I am doing. As an aside, I've mangaed to get my wife's '05 Odyssey looking so good she has stopped asking about a new car. :)

[Don M]

as an aside, i've mangaed to get my wife's '05 odyssey looking so good she has stopped asking about a new car. :)


score!!

[Mike Phillips]

If you're talking about straight plastic trim, that is the black or gray stuff that often times has a pebble texture to it and is NOT painted to match the other body panels then DON'T get any compound, polish or wax on them.

Stick with the CarPro PERL.


For anyone reading this into the future, if you ARE working on panted plastic, like flexible urethane panels painted to match your car, be very careful when using a rotary buffer because urethane does NOT dissipate heat as fast as a metal panel and you can heat the paint of very quickly and do what we call TWIST the paint.

Been there done that on a Viper front bumper and was able to recover from it. Take my word for it... don't do it.

This is very risky when working on an isolated area of a urethane panel because since you're not moving the buffer or a large area but just a small section the concentrated buffing creates heat very fast.

Here's a method to test the heat to avoid trouble...


Fight or Flight Method for Gaging Surface Temperature (http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/wet-sanding-cutting-buffing/22325-fight-flight-method-gaging-surface-temperature.html)


http://www.autogeekonline.net/gallery/data/715/HandOnFire01.jpg



:)

[oldmodman]

MIKE hit the nail right on the head.

HEAT!

It will destroy plastic faster than anything else you can do to it. And I have first hand experience in ruining plastic with a rotary. And I wasn't even polishing the plastic. I was using a foam pad on my Makita on the roof of an SUV and I was in between the roof rails. The edge of the buffer just tagged the plastic around a roof rail and melted it. The damage took place in under one second. And no pressure was involved in holding the foam pad against the plastic.

[Mach1USMC]

I made the same mistake on the front bumper of an R33 GTR - I thought I was screwed!! And I wasn't even using a rotary, just a Rupes LHR15.
M205 and a polishing pad fixed it but I was sweating it pretty bad for a while there!!