i sure don't know as much as some of the other guys about this, but i'll throw something in fwiw. i thought pretty seriously about painting the cladding on mine because i had seen one and liked the shiny typhoon like appearance. then i saw a couple of them that had been painted and noticed a bunch of chips and blemishes that looked pretty bad. my question is this. after you do the paint thing and get the chips and blemishes, what do you do then???????????? seems like you are stuck with chips and blemishes, and then the fix is a lot harder. and for folks that complain about mothers back to black, or black chrome, or shoe polish, or whatever, how easy do you think fixing up the painted ones will be.
i asked a fella i knew that is an exstordinary paint and body man. he restores original gt40's, original cobras, ferraris, and stuff like that and has had a lot of his stuff in magazines and win shows. he truly is outstanding. and NOT cheap. his name is dave ley in wexford pa for anyone looking for someone. he advised against doing the paint for all the reasons the guys are telling you about. he said it could be a constant upkeep nightmare. the typhoons don't have that problem because they originally came finished from the factory. so i didn't do it.
I tried something that seemed to work pretty good if you want to try this. I know there is other stuff around that probably works as well or better and i would appreciate knowing it if someone cares to share. I got a bottle of the new mothers back to black and we put a coat on pretty heavy. we really slathered it on. then we stuck it in the trailer and let it sit for a few days in the sun and the inside of the trailer gets pretty hot and it seemed to bake into the plastic a little bit and when we wiped it off and polished it up it was very shiny and really brought the black back and it almost looked like it had been painted. after that all we ever have had to do is wipe it down with a light buffing of and it seems to polish back up. we're talking two or three minutes here. even when it get crappy looking from rain it comes right back with a little wipe. i realize that most guys don't have an enclosed trailer but if you could stick it in a garage and maybe use a couple of heat lamps to heat the garage up to over a hundred degrees it would be the same. i do think the heat helps to cook it in a little. problems with this method instead of painting are the same old things like dust sticking a little and it is a little greasy and smears a little. also if you paint it you can clean up some of the defects that GM never bothered to do.
but the advantages are that it won't cost a 1000 bucks, and leave you with the paint chipping easily and getting that blotchy look. if you pay enough to the painter he may respray if for you, but he won't do that forever.
I have thought of doing the shoe polish with the same method and then using a little buffer to polish it up with. has anybody else tried this or used the new back to black? what ever you decide good luck! i think what myclone was saying about using the professional cleaner and wax remover sounds like a great way to start prepping
