Experiment with Car Colors, With Plasti Dip

Plasti Dip is the fastest and least expensive way to dramatically change a car’s exterior appearance. In just a few hours, you can paint your car with a removable coating in any imaginable color, from classic flat black to Superglow Moondust Pearl.

The product is nondestructive. It leaves your vehicle’s original paint untouched and can be quickly peeled off (when properly applied). There’s no intensive prep work or days of sanding. It’s the perfect way to hide an imperfect paint job or mismatched body panels. Better yet, this process can be applied to the wheels or part of the car, like a spoiler or roof.

The DIY Dip’y Craze

Once upon a time, Plasti Dip sat on the back shelves of hardware stores. It is a novel liquid product intended to cover and cushion metal tools with a rubbery grip surface. As the name implies, you dip a bare tool handle into the liquid plastic repeatedly and eventually end up with a nice, bright, rubbery handle.

Plasti Dip International, based in Blaine, Minn., started selling liquid rubberized coating in the 1970s and introduced aerosol cans in the 1980s. Sprayable Plasti Dip opened up a new world of coated objects, but it took years for the automotive hobby to take notice. The product eventually became popular to cover chrome emblems, bezels, and grilles.

You could either “blackout” the emblems or make them stand out based on your color choice. And then, one day, a brave soul decided to spray an entire car with the stuff. Videos began appearing on YouTube, and the car-dipping phenomena rolled across the nation.

Dip the Whole Car

If you plan on painting an entire car, you’ll need to buy it by the gallon. An 11-ounce can might offer six square feet of coverage. When searching through eBay Motors for Plasti Dip, you’ll find all the options for colors, metallics, and pearls. You can also find sprayers designed explicitly for rubberized coatings.

Dip jobs hit the stratosphere with a range of Pearlizer, Metalizer, Color Shift Chameleon, and Fluorescent Blaze top coats. White is often used as a base coat to provide more pop for bright colors.

Before committing to a large purchase, find a spray can of your selected color and spray it on a speed shape. This will let you see what the color looks like at all angles and lighting.

When applying it to a vehicle, there is no need to prep the body extensively. Just clean it thoroughly, let it dry, and you will be ready to spray it on. Mask off any portions of the car you don’t want to be covered. Expect to add multiple coats, following the manufacturer’s instructions. Your forefinger will appreciate it if you invest in an aerosol trigger when using rattle cans. When you’re done spraying the coating, remove the mask while the coating is still wet. This will give you a sharp, distinct line.

4 Reasons to Plasti Dip a Car or Truck

• Try on a different color before committing. A conventional paint job can take weeks and cost thousands of dollars. You want to be sure that the color you picked from a paint chip will look good on your car.
• Hide bad paint without painting. If your car has a bad paint job or mismatched body panels, Plasti Dip can hide the truth until you can repaint (or not).
• Protect the original paint. Covering a mint paint job with a rubberized coating can keep the stone chips at bay. This can be useful when taking a 4×4 off-roading or a sports car out for a track day.
• Try something crazy: Do you have an out-of-this-world color scheme or design you’d like to try but don’t want to spend the time or money to make it happen with conventional paint? Wild stripes? Ghosted fishnets? Halloween orange? Go for it!

Color Options

Plasti Dip products originated this DIY trend, but there is a limited color choice. Other brands offer similar options with different color hues. Consider DipYourCar’s HyperDip, Peel Coat from Rustoleum or options from Auto Flex . Some brands suggest different preparations, so read the directions first.

Trying different colors is like trying on clothes before buying them. The best partis that it’s fast and relatively inexpensive. If you don’t like a color on the car, just peel the dip off and spray it with a completely different color.