Painting over plasti-chrome

[Fat Freddy]

I want to paint the “chrome” bumpers and grille on my sca-1e and could do with some advice.

Would a can of regular acrylic do the trick (I’ll be using rattle cans or brushes, don’t have an airbrush), or will it need to be prepped in some way first?

I’m hoping you aren’t going to tell me I need to rub it all down or, worse, remove the “chrome” somehow. The bumpers wouldn’t be too bad but the grille would be really fiddly. (Not that I’m in a rush, happy to take my time and get it right).

The parts are going to be a fairly light, cream colour, would that require an undercoat to mask the shine of the chrome or would it suffice to just give it several coats?

Tempted to just try it with a can of acrylic and see what happens but don’t want to waste £5 or £6 just to watch it peel off again later.

So any advice or warnings about potential pitfalls would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance,

Freddy

[Bajadre]

you may need to scuff the surface to get the paint to stick but wont need to remove it completely freddy thin layers at a time and even coats should do it :)

[Yorkshireman]

You can strip it off  by soaking in bleach ! Never tried it myself but there's a post by Toyolian , in monster trucks - konghead  build...where he uses this method.

[monkeyboy_uk]

As mentioned you can either key it by giving it a light sand, or strip it off.

 

I have used oven cleaner and it came off pretty easily. Just be careful as it's nasty stuff.

[Fat Freddy]

1 hour ago, John Booth said:

You can strip it off  by soaking in bleach ! Never tried it myself but there's a post by Toyolian , in monster trucks - konghead  build...where he uses this method.

 

31 minutes ago, monkeyboy_uk said:

As mentioned you can either key it by giving it a light sand, or strip it off.

 

I have used oven cleaner and it came off pretty easily. Just be careful as it's nasty stuff.

I’ll check out that thread in monster trucks, thanks.

Curious about the idea of applying strong chemicals, does it not affect the plastic beneath?

1 hour ago, Bajadre said:

you may need to scuff the surface to get the paint to stick but wont need to remove it completely freddy thin layers at a time and even coats should do it

Tempted to just try keying it up with a bit of wet and dry but the grille has SO many nooks and crannies .....

Hmmmm??

Thanks folks, 👍