Painting armrests

The armrest bases on the door on all Mark IV and V Lincolns always crack in the same place. After years of searching, I finally found replacements. They run the entire length of the door. I took the two front armrests, plus the two smaller rear ones (so all 4 would match) to a body shop to have them painted to match the car. I also had the idea of having my small Rubbermaid cupholder console painted to match.

I realize this is a difficult color to match, but they are telling me that they want $350.00 to do a 3 stage cleaning, add some kind of flexing agent so that the paint will not crack or peel off (the armrests are plastic), and have the paint custom blended, and paint the 5 pieces. This seemed kind of high to me. Or is that the going rate for this sort of thing nowadays?

I have painted plastic/vinyl parts by simply washing them with lots of lacquerer thinner and then spraying them with wet coats of vinyl paint as soon as the thinner flashes off (with in 2 to 5 minutes)

I have never had a problem with peeling.

I can mix the vinyl paint to match most colors using my Dupont mixing machine.

I would love to get $150 to do yours!

We paint vinyl when necessary. Nothing special about it, just more careful cleaning first. It is a good idea to add a flex agent. Our paint supplier custom matches colors for us at no charge. A pint of paint, the flex agent and hardener might cost $100 or so. I guess the rest of the price depends on the shop's hourly rate.

Figure out what kind of plastic you're painting first!

If it's soft, it's almost certainly vinyl(PVC) and you need to use a flexible paint.

If it's hard, ABS or polypropylene paint very differently. Polypropylene needs an adhesion promoter. ABS is easy to stick to but sensitive to solvents.

Off hand, the color is a mass tone - shouldn't be that hard to match, even instrumentally.

The color is Aqua Blue Diamondfire Metallic. I called a couple paint places and two wouldn't touch it. The third can match it. By the time we are done with paint, reducer, and adhesion spray, it was $150.00. Paint alone was $91.10. Then they told me about all the different steps that are required for painting. Plus it will probably require a couple of coats since one is gray and one is gold. Two different paint places refused to paint it also. I'd love to pay $150.00 for the whole job, but the stupid armrests are so fragile that they would probably break. They are hard plastic that cracks very easily. And since they are about 5 feet long, shipping probably wouldn't be cheap either.

Since I have never done anything like this before, it may be better just to pay the high labor cost than to mess up $150.00 worth of paint, and armrests that cannot be found anywhere.

Take a good sample to a paint shop and have them custom match some SEM vinyl paint for you. Pick up some cleaner and prep and do it yourself!

This should cost you less than $50-$75 total. If by some chance you aren't happy with the results, you can always pay the big boys.

I've done touch ups with SEM before and it is great stuff.