One of the last items on the to do list of making Project XT look pretty was to freshen up the 40 year old plastic side panels. To do so I used a product called
Plastic Renew from PC Racing (It may be discontinued now. It was hard to find). I had used it before on my old Honda XR200 offroad bike and it worked well. I got started by sanding down the plastics to remove the layer of old oxidized exterior plastic. 400, 600, 600, 1000 grit followed by steel wool and 00 fine steel wool. Then we applied the plastic renew to restore the shine. It essentially puts a thin layer of clear plastic on the surface. I did this while at my parent's place for Christmas.
My Dad loves doing this type of fine detail work so he applied the multiple layers of plastic renew.
Everything went well until I applied the side panel decals. When the plastic flexed it caused the plastic renew to de-laminate from the side panel and the decal was not adhered to the side panel. This resulted in the look of bubbles. So I ripped off the decal and re-applied the plastic renew and proceeded without the side panel decals.
