To paint or not to paint
I’m on a bit of a fix up mission with my truck, whats everyones thoughts, should I paint the bumpers, wheels arches and mirrors or leave the self coloured plastic??? Mines is an 1991 300ge where the exterior plastics are self coloured and not painted like the new ones!!
It depends what you want it for:
1. If you want it to off-road, leave the plastic as it is....
2. If you want to look good cruizin' paint it up!
Self colour for me - no paint.
Depends who you want your cred with.
For me having one of the 'cleanest build' 463s would make me want to shout it to those who know, however small a group that may be.
Call me a puritan:)
I'm with Phileas on this one. nothing looks worse than scuffed painted plastic, except of course, a very sick G with a mashed up wing......
You got me confused there with the term "self coloured", do you mean the natural colour of the plastic? Those parts were actually all painted a dark grey, code 7167 I think, so you could repaint them in that and they would look like new.
Here's a few pics if I can upload them, I just did my wheel arches and bumpers in the OE colour but with a satin finish for durability, as they were beginning to fade and you could see the primer on some of them.
what, so even then the non colour coded ones are painted as well?
Hmmm tough choice. I umm'ed and Err'ed' for a while when the garage offered to replace my old black front and back bumpers. I decided in the end to get the whole thing color coordinated, and to tell the truth was very happy with the outcome.
Unless your doing mega off roading I would suggest leave well alone, but mine seemed to survive quite well, and usually all it needs is some T-Cut and a 'magic marker' and they come shiny up again.
(just watch out for the puritan's on the forum, they will be burning you and accusing you of witch craft! - funny lot...)
Spider1V
Indeed they are primered and painted, quite a thick layer as well as it lasted a few years of battering. When re-painting they need a plastic flexible primer to prevent them cracking with time and expansion.
The new finish on front 463 bumpers is quite poor, mine started fading and spotting after only 2 years.
Could start a new trend leaving them in the dark Grey.
Colour coded stuff is so 1999. :-)
M2dxb, with all respect, you are talking rubbish.
My car is a 1991 300GDS, and the arches are hard rubber instead of plastic. When they repaired it, they replaced it with painted plastic ones because you can’t get the rubber arches any more. I would not paint the original ones, but I would gladly swop my brand new paintable ones for the old type.
LEEU, his car is a '91 463, as is mine and yours, so I am talking about the version fitted to our cars, as I know for a fact there are at least 5 different versions of factory wheel arches out there, probably made of 3 different materials.
Just because you think the original 91s are not painted from the factory doesn't mean they're not.
Very little on the outside of the G comes unpainted from the factory, they just changed colours of the bumpers/wheel arches over the years. Your old rubber arches were most likely painted, as were mine, and in the attached photo you can see the effect of wear on the outer layer, so that it wore down to the white primer underneath.
interesting thread !
leeu you either know mostafa really well to make that comment or you are loosing your manners mate ! excuse my IF comment you ARE well acqainted..
mostafa you right, the bumper code number is spot on ! [ mercedes has recently introduced a 2012 model 463 with gloss black bumpers and mirrors and it looks fantastic in my opinion]
mxd2b, your arches and trim look spot on mate ! infact ph and mark are right with the black bumpers coming back into trend. my G300 came with non colour coded bumpers but were later coded by the previous owner as were the mirrors. it looks nice but i am going to return them back to factory 7167 this summer...
i would go back to factory spec if you like the factory look. if you scuff them at least they will not look too bad... colour coded bumpers also look good ! its really down to personal taste and repect must be given...
I MUST EMPHASISE THAT IF YOU OWN A G500 V8 MUST GO WITH THE BLING AND COLOUR CODE THE LOT, INC WIPER ARMS TOO... [you know who you are....]
rgds hus
M2dbx, your last picture of your bumper, in the series of three above, the top surface is starting to warp up, mines are really bad in this area so much so they are rubbing on the body. This is one of the reasons I want to paint them!
"M2dxb, with all respect, you are talking rubbish."
You forgot the "respect" bit.
I don’t want to take over Johnnytheboy’s thread, but I do find it a bit annoying when wrong information is given out as facts. In this case I agree that anything can be painted, but not everything was painted, I still have my old broken set of arches to prove that, and although only 1 was broken, they could not find a replacement, so they had to change the whole set.
If you do decide to paint the old ones, I would be very careful with regards to paint selection, primer etc.
With regards to respect and manners, sorry for saying what I feel, how I feel.
Best of luck with your decision on the paint, if it was me I would not paint them, but my cars have to earn their keep.
Did you mean the bumper end cap that has warped a bit in the last photo? The attachment tabs are very small and easy to damage, hence they break off and start rattling, eventually damaging the bodywork. When you put them back on make sure they are on tight. Otherwise it is probably just the plastic warping with old age (though technically speaking they're a glass fibre composite, in case I am misunderstood) ;-)
In fairness I don’t think mines are painted, they look like plastic, hence the reason I said self coloured. I can confirm this tomorrow as one of them has been gouged on a wall or similar and it will show paint and primer if it has been painted.
Primer selection is easy, plastic primer is an etch primer that adheres to the plastic(self etch), on top of that you can just use regular primer or transparent sealer. All primers are flexible enough for plastics, the problem with delaminating always occurs if a good plastic primer has not been used. We have two, an ICI aerosol and glasurit version to go through the spray gun.
Yes it the end cap part that is all warped, really badly as well, it makes the truck look nasty or like its been bumped. The bumper is off as the back door, back panel and ¼’s are being painted just now. I will have a look inside it to see if there is tabs etc, I’ll maybe even try to reinforce it.
The responses here made me go over some old material...I found an old MB document printed from WIS ('96 - source unknown) talking about finishes of the G, and it shows 463s have those parts painted (albeit body colour, clearly not the case in early 463s) and 461s unpainted (but still says black?), so it might be that those on my G were painted by a previous owner?
I know the later plastic ones are stiffer than the old ones as we have those on the G500.
My memory of the original ones we retrofitted on a '94 G300 back in Dubai many years ago is weak, but they came in black, or dark grey whatever that colour is.
Will try to attach that doc for reference.
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I will go off road but no cliff hanging, just driving around the wee forest we shoot in. Street cred has a bit to do with it I suppose!!
I just want the truck to look good and do it justice!!