1964 Polara Door Panels - Vinyl Painting

[Charlie Brown]

I recently changed the door panel cards on my 64 Polara - learning curve but they turned out better than the 60 year old units. Not perfect but acceptable for me. New re-pops are about $850 US which equals about $1300 Canadian by the time they reach my door. The bottom of the vinyl has old paint or whatever which I can't remove. Anyone have success with painting vinyl? I'd be looking for product information as well as color match. I'm looking for the deep / dark blue for the lower part of the panel. Thanks, Charlie

 

[sam dupont]

I took beige to black with great success. Years later it is still good. Don't know about dark to light. I used SEM.

 

[Sahara]

I assembled the dash for my ‘70 Coronet from three different coloured cars. Sprayed them with a Duplicolor product, if I recall correctly. It worked great. It is approximately B7 blue. Not much gloss to it but it looks great and is permanently bonded. Surface prep is everything.

 

[sam dupont]

I assembled the dash for my ‘70 Coronet from three different coloured cars. Sprayed them with a Duplicolor product, if I recall correctly. It worked great. It is approximately B7 blue. Not much gloss to it but it looks great and is permanently bonded. Surface prep is everything.

I forgot prep. I would have used my usual: scrub brush, Tide laundry detergent, and lots of elbow grease.

 

[RemCharger]

SEM.

 

[dvw]

If the vinyl has old paint laquer thinner will usually take it off. I've made my own boards more than once. Cutting the clip holes takes the longest. I've used the dye as well with good results. We've also made our own cloth covers.
Doug

 

[Sahara]

Tide or any of the detergents with lots of T.S.P. or even straight T.S.P. work well for cleaning this stuff. I use Spray-9. It will remove a lot of “dead” plastic, which can be alarming when you wipe the parts but if you leave the dead plastic on the dye or paint won’t adhere properly anyway. Then I rinse with Windex. Wear gloves, regardless of what you use.

 

[sam dupont]

Is trisodiumphosphate still? Or is it like Brasso and just trisodiumphosphate-ish? They banned TSP for years, but now I see it on store shelves. In college I painted Kentucky Fried Chicken stores. I would use brooms and scrub those buildings. TSP cut the grease like crazy, but then they banned it. Brasso still works, but nothing like the vintage stuff.

 

[Sahara]

I dunno about the ‘states but you find find it in Canada at hardware stores. Pretty sure it’s the real deal. It is pretty toxic but works slick.

 

[Dave6T4]

Here are my door panels that I did up for my '64 Polara 4-door hardtop. They are out of a U.S. parts car I had. The U.S. panels are much more ornate than the Plymouth Belvedere based ones that came with my Canadian car originally. They were originally red, but I masked off some of the red and sprayed them black. I used SEM vinyl paint from CarQuest. Duplicolor has an adhesion promoter that temporarily softens the vinyl to make the dye stick better. First picture is of plainer panels the car came with. I also used the longer front door arm rests and bases on the rear door. Quite a change!