Redoing the interior on my Project 95' F350. The truck is going to be a white on black theme. The interior is in less than pristine condition and this will be the first time I've ever redesigned an interior my self and am trying to do it in a cost effective manner. The first problem with the interior is previous owner had a bunch of accessories I'm taking out and so there are holes in parts of the dash (plastic parts of dash). I'd have to say the biggest hole is 1/4" wide so they aren't huge chunks of the dash missing. I am assuming I can just use some bondo to fill the holes and sand it down smooth? Is there a special type of bondo to use with plastic or something totally different I should do instead? Secondly what do you guys recommend for paint? 99% of the interior is plastic except two pieces of trim that run along atop the front windshield and the rear window. I was just going to use bed liner as it's durable and doesn't have a high gloss finish but will it adhere to plastic right? Lastly the truck has power windows and power locks so on the door panels it has a foam like material (SEE ATTACHED PICTURE). How would I go about painting the foam material? Or is it not possible and I'll have to look for black power door panels that have black foam already? Do they maybe sell replacement foam or is it even removable so I can just cover it with a black fabric? As for the carpeted lower section I was just going to carpet dye it black or maybe reupolster it if it's not to involved.
(Foam is the darker blue part of panel surrounding switches)

Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated thanks!

 

I would use JB weld to fill holes, as for paint, either do it the cheap way with duplicolor vinyl and fabric paint, or go all out/oem quality SEM paint. Bedliner sticks best to metal, and needs to have a very rough surface to stick to.

 

Are you saying used the duplicolor vinyl and fabric paint for the foam part of the door? Think I'm leaning towards plasti dip now for the interior trim parts. Plasti dips a bunch of exterior accessories on my silverado and is holding up exceptionally well color and chip wise. Color hasn't faded at all and hasn't chipped either.

 

think about how often you touch your door panels, spots in your interior, plastidip isn't hard enough to not wear off.

 

So what do you suggest then? Use the duplicolor on all the trim pieces?

 

From my own experience I have found that SEM is a much better product than Duplicolor. The problems I had with Duplicolor were poor adhesion and it seemed to leave a rough texture. SEM is certainly more expensive but if you are looking for long lasting and high quality results its worth it.

 

I read in there website that it "restores oem appearance" leading me to believe it's intended to be sprayed over pieces that are already that color (or close to it). You think it will come out right with the original pieces being blue and me wanting to convert them to black? I'm sure it will but just want to make sure before I pull the trigger on buying it.

 

I'm in the middle of an interior color change myself (also blue to black). I did a ton of research on interior paint and also decided to go with SEM. I had a horrible experience. I did everything by the book; wet sand, clean with alcohol, spray with adhesion promoter, prime, then paint. All at proper intervals, done in a clean garage. The finished product looked like someone had thrown sand on all the panels between prime and paint. I purchased more than I needed of everything, so I assumed it was my screw-up and started again from scratch. Same exact result. I called SEM and they were very helpful, but said it was likely a lot of improperly manufactured primer. They offered to send me new cans for free, but I'd had enough of the entire process.

I decided to install the panels as they were, just the installation process scraped and gouged the finish, all the way down to the original color. I'm assuming because the process was entirely compromised by the defective primer.

I know people have used SEM with great success (insert borat accent), I just couldn't get it to work.

My solution has been to wrap everything in automotive interior vinyl. It's a little more tedious (measure, trim, glue, heat, stretch), but certainly faster. The few pieces I've done look fantastic, and I think the vinyl will take more abuse than some paint will. As for my door panels; new set in black from JC Whitney.

I can't speak to carpet dying, but I imagine it's quite a process. My truck is mainly for hunting/camping so I threw in the polyvinyl flooring from LMC Truck, it looks fantastic and feels tough as nails.

Don't mean to scare you away from painting, just sharing my experience, and FWIW I shoulda went with the vinyl wrap from jump.

Hope this helps.

 

Definitely going to look into the vinyl especially after you used a borat quote ������ yeah I think I'm going to buy new carpet anyways as this carpet is original and pretty worn. For $200 it's worth it just to get new carpet. Have too look into those jc Whitney panels. I'm on a kind of tight bugget so that's why I wanted to paint all the old stuff instead of trying to find black oem trim and what not. Was going to do some testing with a broken piece of plastic trim with Bed liner to see how it would adhere and what not. Couldn't find a lot of info on anyone actually trying it. Just people who read the can that says "intended for metal only" so I'll be sure to post my results on that. Never worked with vinyl before but seams like it would be incredibly difficult to get it inside all the grooves in the front dash and what not.

 

Bah, the dash shouldn't be TOO hard. I think I've mapped out where I'll have seam brakes tucked away. I got an automotive interior tool set from Ebay that has a bunch of little wedges that look like putty knives to help tuck into tight spots. The more I talk about it, I should take pics of the process and see if I can't get it stickey'ed.
Yeah, I dunno about the bed liner on plastic. Smart to test it first, would suck to get everything assembled and be unhappy in a few months.
Also, if you're gonna re-do the carpet, I'd suggest getting some heat shield material to put under it. I put some all purpose stuff under mine and holy crap what a difference.

Good luck man, between the two of us we should be able to come up with an interior process that future FTE folks can use haha!

 

Honestly the only thing keeping me from the vinyl is the fact that I've never worked with it before and would hate to buy all the supplies and figure out i'm no good at it and have to pay someone to do it after buying all the supplies to do it myself ya know? I pulled part of the old carpet up today while tracing some wires and it has a heat shield material underneath the carpet already. Don't know the true extent of it as I only had a small section of the carpet up by the drivers feet but will look into it for sure!!

 

Ok so I did the test with the Bed Liner on a broken piece of plastic trim today. All I did was clean the plastic with rubbing alcohol as far as prep goes. I used the Rustoleum rattle can bed liner. Hit it with one light coat. Let it dry for about two hours then tested out. Was pretty durable for just one coat and not even letting it fully cure. Had to force my finger nail into it really hard to get it to peel. Think it will work just fine for my main dash as it doesn't see a whole lot of touching or scraping or anything (I'm not that kind of guy who keeps stuff on top of his dash). It took a considerable amount of force to get it to peel, much more force then it will ever see by accidents and what not. Now my biggest concern is fading from UV rays and how it will handle being cleaned. I could probably just use a window sunblocker thing when the truck is parked to minamize the UV fade but I know some glass has UV blocker in it. Not sure if this technology was around at the time this truck was produced or if they even use it in windshields but I know it's around as my 2004 Silverado Door windows has it. As far as cleaning goes bed liner is a rough and sticky surface so I feel like dust and stuff will accumulate more often and the Swiffer dust rag will get caught on all the rough areas and leave bits of itself stuck to the bed liner. Going to do a test on another piece sometime with more coats of bed liner and allowing it to fully cure properly then test the cleaning rags out on it to see how it goes but it's looking to have some serious promise!!

 

Got some panels off a junked OBS behind the shop a couple days ago and had some time to mess around with them to decide what would be the best paint to use to change the colors on my current panels. Disassembled the door panels completely. I was testing a 99 cent no name matte black spray can, rustoleum gloss black spray can, and rustoleum bedliner. For the plastic pieces the bedliner seams to hold up the best. All the paints were HARDER to peel with my finger nail but bed liner seamed to be the most peel resistant. For the first round of tests I just cleaned the plastic with alcohol and hit them with multiple coats of paint and no clear coat. Still got a bunch of pieces to experiment with so going to try using an adhesion promoter first then applying the paints and see if I get any better results. More to come on how it's going for sure!!

Hardest part is going to be the sponge like panel that the switches sit in and the little change pocket/arm rest thing in the middle of the panel....




Didn't paint the speaker grill insert or the bottom vent because I'm experimenting with color schemes at the same time. This whole panel is bedliner by the way.

 

I have no experience with this and am not likely to ever do anything like it, but I find it fascinating. Would really like to see some before and after pics of the whole process.

 

Took care of two of the 3 pieces that proved to be the most troublesome. I tried vinyl wrapping the arm rests with little success as you can see.


Carbon fiber was the only vinyl my buddy had laying around so that's why its carbon fiber color.

Could have probably paid someone to do it professionally but instead I decided to try the SEM interior trim/leather/all around paint I heard about on here....except the local parts store doesn't carry it. And I wasn't about to pay shipping plus the cost of the SEM just to try it and hope it works so I bought this Dupli-color interior paint instead for testing purposes. It's literally the same thing as the SEM just Dupli-color name brand. The stuff worked great and its ability to flex without stretch marks or cracking was amazing! Was very surprised with how well it worked!! Waiting till the weekend so it's fully cured and to test ArmourAll on it to see how it reacts to that...if reacts just fine then this is what I'll be painting the interior pieces with as I get a good discount on it through the shop I work at.





Now to figure out the carpet...which shouldn't be too hard as I want to go black with it which is a lot easier to turn something not black to black rather than vise versa. Will keep updated once I get the carpet done and the panels all back together as a finished product!