I'm sure most of you know how the sun sooner or later makes the plastic interior mouldings and panels start deteriorating, disintegrating, and/or changing colors.
When they get to the point of starting to disintegrate, is there anything anyone knows of that can be done to restore them to be more solid again?

I know you can paint them but the paint doesn't seem to stick well and it scratches off real easy where the panels are turning to dust. Anyone have any solutions?

You have 2 choices that I'm aware of. Buy 'new' ones (used on Ebay) or Lauren Engineering has fiber glass replacements. Once they start falling apart I think that's pretty much it.

Before I swapped out my '78's interior for an '84 interior, I took all the original '78 peices and sand blasted all the rot off. Then primed and painted. The roughed-up sand blasted plastic had a unique texture to it. The blasting also took out alot of the scratches too. It really didn't look bad at all 8)

If you are talking about the chrome foil falling off, you would think somwhere out there there you could find some metalized adhesive tape. HVAC tape might work but I think it's a little too thick.

When they get to the point of starting to disintegrate, is there anything anyone knows of that can be done to restore them to be more solid again?


Plastic takes a beating from the sun. Once the plastic gets chalky there's not much you can do to restore it. Find some newer panels in good condition and dye them to match your current interior. There must be lots for sale on ebay.

:mrgreen:

Newbie to the forum here. And newbie to an 80 Cabalerro, and i just HAD to put my two cents in here. My 80 caballero had terribly deteriorated door panels which were extremely chalky. I sandblasted them with a cheezy 20$ sandblast gun using 40 psi, wet sanded lighty then EVER SO CAREFULLY took a heat gun used for paint stripping to them. First one i warped pretty badly... but learned a valuable lesson. I thereafter heated about a one inch square at a time( takes about one second), moved to a different part of the panel etc etc until i had the whole panel done. I have redone 3/4 of my interior plastic this way and it looks like new! Even the " leather texturing" resurfaced! Amazing! ( gotta love plastic mold injection ;)
Glad to have found you all.. LOTS of good info on here!
Caballero awayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

:?:

Ok, I understand the wet sanding and the sandblasting part of your comment, but what was the deal with the heat gun????

What was the purpose of the heat gun on the plastic door panel?

Inquiring minds want to know :lol:

As CHVYPWR stated in his post, the sandblasting leaves an interesting texture.... one that i personally was not too happy with. My idea was to surface melt the plastic to get a smooth finish. Little did i know that the leather texturing would resurface. It was an unexpected but VERY welcome outcome. The leather texturing is not nearly as pronounced as when new, but its still visible and anyone who didnt know i blasted the HECK out of the plastic trim probably wouldnt know the difference!

I took mine out and took them to be recovered in a matching vinyl. I quess you could do it yourself, just need a can or two of 3M adhesive, a roll of material, some sharp tools a lot of paitence and the time.