DIY - Restoring Faded Door Handles For Cheap
 

The door handles tend to fade on these cars, my car was a pretty nasty example. Coming from the Mitsubishi world, I really like to see how creatively I can stretch a dollar.
This isn't something I'd seen documented here so I wanted to post for others to try.

All I used was a Meguiar's headlight restoration kit, 1 microfiber cloth, and glass cleaner.

https://imgur.com/gallery/ZbPYYgX

Step 1-
Clean the door handle! I used foaming glass cleaner and a microfiber cloth

Step 2-
Wetsand with 1000 grit sanding pad. I spray the sanding pad with the glass cleaner and gently scrub the surface.
Be very careful around the edges; don't scuff the door paint!

Step 3-
Wipe the door handle down. Look at the microfiber!! We're not done, repeat steps 2 and 3.

Step 4-
Switch to the 3000 grit pad. More wetsanding! Remember that you're not scrubbing, you're smoothing- just let the pad glide across back and forth.

Step 5-
Get your microfiber and put some plastic polish on it! Technically this is a buffing stage, but we're being cheap here. Rub in right circles, apply some pressure.

Step 6-
Flip the cloth over and rub the compound off!

Step 7-
Grab the little rectangle sponge, your headlight coating, and get a clean section of your microfiber ready- almost done!


Apply a few drops to the sponge and wipe gently onto the door handle in long sweeps slowly. Always coat in the same direction and do not allow it to run. If it runs, use your microfiber to wipe it off quickly. Do not touch the door handle during/after coating for at least an hour!

Step 8-

Come back out in a bit and admire your shiny door handles! I wouldn't open/touch them for the remainder of the dark, just to be sure the coating has settled. I was very happy with how effective this was. We'll see long term how it holds up!

Great work, just FYI you can purchase new pre-painted door handles from Toyota for less ~$50 for those who don’t want to spend the time on a DIY.

Also thy are very easy to remove from the car to prevent damaging the surrounding paint, no door panel removal needed.

Good info! I'll have to look up how to remove them, I would've thought they were screwed in from behind the panel

Is this just a red car thing? Don't remember ever seeing any other colour with this complaint. Is it the lack of a pearl coat maybe?

Reds are the worst for oxidizing.

Yeah I had the same Paint issue with my red FRS.
There is an access plug on the door frame, check YouTube.

They always have been since the beginning of time!
Wonder how the newer 86s with the pearl in the red are standing up though.

I'm curious as well. My red 91 Miata was the worst fading paint I'd ever seen...

I never thought about fading since the clear coat became separate but I guess red still has issues. Made sense to me with the old enamels where the pigment was part of the paint itself so exposed to the UV and oxygen but the clear and pearl coats should protect it. At least in theory.

Wow! The outcome looks really nice.

How has this held up?

The car hasn't seen sunlight since April, so I don't think it's really been tested. Still great though!

Brilliant - will give this a go then!

It's certainly a hell of a lot better than leaving them alone :)

As detailing hobbyist, mine has never seen such fading as my paint is always protected.
IMO, a better & safer (for the paint) way to do such restoration is to use a compound if there are deep scratches, then polish to recondition the paint to bring back the deep gloss & remove fine scratches, then seal/protect using either wax or sealant.

If you notice that paint transfer, it means that your clear coat is gone. It seems like you've started with a very strong abrasive at 1k grit then moved to 3k. Compounding could've removed the scratches in most cases without hurting the clearcoat

While this makes sense, the clear coat had already been damaged. If I had known the door handles of all things were Fisher Price, I wouldn't have let them go unprotected :) there certainly are better ways of going about this, I was just providing a cheapskate backyard mechanic way of doing it. The 1k grit probably is unnecessary, but I tried just using a buffing compound and got nowhere so I decided to go deep.

Thank you for the input! I'm by no means a detailing professional and am always open to advice.