How to make plastic on bumper look new?
 

the plastic on the rear bumper, looks sunbleached and faded.

is there any kind of treatment to use to make them look black/dark grey again?

Paint?

Mother's back-to-black is supposed to help for that sort of issue as well. See if that doesn't help you out.

SEM bumper coating. works great. i promise.

Back to Black works great, but you need several applications. Takes some time, but I seem severely faded plastic come back. It just gets blacker with each application.

I use that "high shine" armoral on mine, takes the white right off of it and makes em look brand new.

^ i used to do mine like that but found its easier just to buy the tube of those armor all wipes and one of those will do the plastic on the rear bumper and my front one too

^those are GREAT, thats what I use now, no overspray or splotchy areas anymore

yea those things put a hell of a shine on there!

what if I wanted to paint my trim with that SEM stuff... does it need to be applied with a airgun? or rattle can fine? I don't want those chips or comming off in a year...

If you use armor all wipes that are for intereor on extereor the sund will fade it even more, i wouldnt recommend using that....

I would use back to black

Rocky

it comes in a rattlecan... i used it to change the color of my front lower valance and rear step from factory gray to black. i didnt have to retouch it once in the 5 or 6 months that i had the bumpers on... i've since gotten new colormatched bumpers. it doesnt chip or peel AT ALL. you can scuff it if you try hard enough though.

they also have a couple different gray colors, if you want to just renew your existing plastic. sticking with gray might be good, just because if it does scuff, you wont even notice since the bumper color is gray too.

that stuff is great... i have not tried it on the truck bumper but it removed years of oxidation from the bumpers and trim on my mercedes

sounds weird but Ive heard of people using peanut butter (wipe on and off) to bring plastic parts back to like new lookin. Never tried it tho ??? Somethin about some ingredients that clean the plastic ? dunno tho

I was just going to recommend this. The natural oils in peanut butter bring back to shine and remove the oxidation from plastics. I have used it on my mustang wiper cowl and side mirrors and it works like a charm. It doesnt even take a whole lot. I did it to my car months ago and they still look great. Back to Black works good as well but it does need to be reapplied quite often.

in some auto parts stores you can get a can of paint called "trim paint". makes em look new all over again and you won't have to worry about all that other crap.
fun weekend project too.

When I had my Explorer I used to heat it up a little bit with a heat gun and it made it shine like new... Usually lasted about 6 months until another heat job... Someone told me it mase the oils in the plastic come to the surface or something..

never thought of that. sounds reasonable

the SEM stuff is good. PN 39103 for the 'original' flexible bumper coater. if you want the Trim Paint, that works well too. PN 39143 and its a satin black finish. the '3' at the end of the PN denotes a spray can so clean it up and spray away. they make it a ton of colors too, some of them are meant to match certain oem finishes and others are just universal colors.

Oh man, this sounds really stupid but WD-40 the whole thing everytime u wash yor car. It really works and it will get back to like new!