LX body side molding sticky coating

91- 93 where body color not black... Solvent may be to strong for the molding if its eating into it on the non original moldings that never had factory paint to seal them.... When my car was vandalized years ago with brake fluid. it did pretty much the same thing to the quarter molding, the rubber on the quarter glass and even warped the bumper and ate the tail light lense.. It lifted the paint on the metal surfaces like a sheet of paper. ******* poured it on the roof of the car and it destroyed every thing the liquid touched as it ran off it.

It was 20 years ago. Did a full repaint of it no long after it happened.. Dude went from yelling anytime he heard the car to never saying a word to me after it was vandalized in my driveway. Never could prove it was him but kama got him 10 times worse then i could when he wrecked his car driving drunk. Typical jackass that conflated a loud car as driving aggressively, I never even got a ticket in that car.

If there original moldings and bumpers they will be blue underneath but high chance at least one was replaced if someone painted them black.. My guess is they just spay bombed them with trim coat. And a non catalyst paint from a spay can won't hold up to any decent solvent like the factory 2 part paint will.

Best bet is probably to respray just the molding with trim paint if you fine with them being black sem works pretty well from a spray can... Most people would have at least scuffed the oem finish before spaying them so its a gamble to remove the spray paint from the rest.

ustacould said:

Was matching color correct for a ‘92 LX ?

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Yes, those moldings would have been the same color as the rest of the car from the factory.

ustacould said:

Positive these are original factory moldings, it's like some sort of top coat is dissolving like a steering wheel will with age. I just stopped for now before make a bigger mess.

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They may be the original moldings, but someone definitely painted them black. The question is, why?

The part you cleaned doesn't look too bad. Will those spots that are still black clean up to body color? If so, may as well try to clean the rest of the black off. Mineral spirits shouldn't harm factory paint, if that is what's underneath the black. May need to be polished up a bit, depending on how dull the newly exposed surface is.

Still odd why it was painted over, being as all the rest of the car appears to be as it was when it left the factory.

rednotch said:

Best bet is probably to respray just the molding with trim paint if you fine with them being black sem works pretty well from a spray can... Most people would have at least scuffed the oem finish before spaying them so its a gamble to remove the spray paint from the rest.

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If you don't mind them being black, then yea, you could respray them. The moldings being black just look out of place to me. Maybe try cleaning them and if they come back to life, then you're set. If not... if they've been scuffed up or in whatever way had the surface finish ruined, then give them a coat of black paint.

That existing black finish looks pretty rough (both literally and figuratively) in that one pic.