hello! I'm a new owner and wanting to start out small personalizing my Fit Sport. I had this great idea to get some stock "H" badges for the front (maybe rear too) and paint them flat black. I work at an independant shop so i can get oem honda parts for little over cost... way less than msrp. My questions are:

1. How in depth is taking off the old chrome "H" off the oem grille?

2. How in depth is taking off the old chrome "H" off the hatch?

3. Would this be tacky and/or look bad???

4. Should i avoid this?

Questions, comments, info, ideas... ALL ARE WELCOME!!!
Thanx for your input

-ADAM

 

dude that i work with picked up the first v6 six speed 08 accord and he did this to it. it looks nice but its on a black car. also id be weary of the little rocks that hit our car would pummel the black paint and start showing chrome underneath

 

in order to get the paint to stick really well, you'll need to strip the "chrome" paint off the badges. leave tehm in bleach for a day and that'll get the paint off without hurting teh badge

 

kelsodeez did that to his Fit try a search for his pics, it looked pretty good.

Depending on the paint you could also just clean with alcohol and use a good primer then paint black. You could also just lightly sand with 600 grit or so and paint away and/or do a primer then paint.
And of course if you just really cleaned it and just shot on straight flat black you would proabably be ok for a while. Maybe *crosses fingers* a long while.

Just keep it too light coats until there is enough tooth for the final sprays.

If you do it, have fun and post pics

 

ive had my badges painted flat black for a while and the way i did it has held up really well. here is the process i went through

first i scuffed the plastic really well with a dark red scotch brite pad. then i wiped it down with wax and grease remover. then i sprayed an adhesion promoter specially made for plastic surfaces. put about four coats of primer on it, then put about five coats of SEM brand "trim black" spray paint. i dont think its necessary to remove the silver coating on the emblem.
ive had my emblems on for about six months of daily driving and not one chip or any fading of the paint.

 

Thanx guys!

Kelsodeez, how was the badge removal??? Difficult?

 

I did this to mine and someone stole it in a parking lot

 

This is the best instruction you can get! Right on Kelso!

Mine started pitting up front since i did not put enough paint cotes. The paint itself could be less durable than what Kelso used, too. Then again I did not have much choice - I painted mine red to match the car.
I also added CF as a background.

For removal up front, you have two philips screws and few tabs to undo.
On the back, remove tailgate plastic of the interior, undo couple 10mm bolts, remove wiper arm and carefully pull the exterior panel. There are white plastic clips holding it too. If some end up staying on the tailgate once you remove the panel, pop them out and install them on the panel before you re-install the panel.
Once you have both the grill and rear panel off, use dremel to cut the metal retainers in order to remove badges. Pulling and prying will break them since they are fragile. If you do break them, it is not the end of the world. Use rubber silicone (so you can remove them latter if you have to) or crazy glue or epoxy (if you would like to make it permanent).

 

Ciburri, where did you get the CF backgrounds on those?

 

BlueCell,
I got a DL-03 carbon laminate sheet for $28!!!!
http://www.acp-composites.com/decolam.pdf

This is the link to a page one British motorcycle enthusiast gathered of composite material distributors world wide.
I got mine from Aerospace Composite Products in Livermore, CA.
Composite Material Supplier Links

There is a place in Texas as well on the list. My suggestion would be to either visit nearest place on the list (or the one you can locate on your own) and see the products yourself, or order the same laminated sheet from ACP. Just call them. There is rigid panel laminate on the PDF above as well. For the difference in price to places such as TAP Plastics, you can wrap entire car in carbon, or Kevlar, or blue carbon, red carbon, yellow carbon, ....... ROFL!
This post will create serious carbon fireworks on this forum!

Ivan

 

That's F'in Sweet. Thanks for the info

 

Looks great will definitely be looking into doing this to my car.

 

Now im not sure about this because it was something I found out by accident and im not sure if they all are like this but it might work and you might like it but I had a 98 accord sohc when that body sty came out and I was going to take off emblems until I notice that there were holes in the trunk where it was so for the time being I covered hole with tape. I wanted to put on body kit and get it painted so I left the H in a bucket with some other parts I had laying around from my DA teg at the time couple week later I was going to put it back on cause I was told that you can cause rust by leaving tape over the holes, but by the time I got to it water collected in the bucket parts rusted which made emble rust kinda to. So me being stupid I thought the emblem where metal but were plastick but when i tried to buff it out it wore dow plastic coating. But it made theemblem turn like a shiny gunmetal color which to me looked cool so I put It back on that way. so I let the othe one in the front set in the rusty water for like a week and buffed it out it turned that colr to but was a little more shiny but only noticable when put together. So if you would like to try pick up some cheap plastic ones from a junk accord and try it out might work might not but might give you something to do one day

 

Sorry for the long story i know people hate to read

 

lol...i skipped over it and read this one...

 

i also did my emblems.

 

i used black satin...