Repaint or Plasti-Dip Trim?

[StephenVA]

Originally Posted by 270_BMW

I do have access to a paint shop. Would you recommend removing the rails for painting to minimize over spray? Will sand down and repaint the Wiper arms. The trim is all black for the time being.. the only chrome is the badging and the kidneys in the grill. Standard for a gloss black X5 I think.

I would pop off all the rails and wipers, sand, prep them and reshoot them with a semi gloss black then a coat or two of clear. That way you would have a lasting finish.

[oldskewel]

My brother in law was over on Sat, asking about things on his car (not an x5) and plastidip recommendations. In particular, on the wipers, his car had some parts that were plastic (faded by now) and some black-painted steel.

From looking at those parts, I came to the recommendation that he should use paint on the metal parts and plastidip on the plastic parts. Some of the smaller plastic parts really seemed to flex a lot, and I can see how paint might have an issue cracking or flaking off with that.

My x5's paint has the clearcoat flaking off in a few places, so it is not pretty. I had the rear spoiler off the other day when I needed to fix a flaky LED in the 3rd brakelight bar, so I took the opportunity to spray it with some black plastidip. Looks OK, and way better than the flaking clearcoat did. And if I ever want to get a real paint job (which will be never), I can just peel off the plastidip.

[BMTouring]

plastidip only on parts that you will not touch/rub against. or prepare to re-do the job regularly.

There are paints that will be ok on the (somewhat) flexible parts, not very cheap I suppose but worth a bit of research.