Sheesh — I’ve been so bored waiting between house showings that I’ve worked on all sorts of weird projects that were easy to quickly put away. Here’s another one.

I have a 2006 Xterra. I love my little SUV and plan to drive it until it drops. I bought it used in 2008 and it has been a trooper requiring very little in the way of repairs. The fuel gauge sensor died around 50,000 miles, a known failure, and that’s been about it except for normal maintenance.

Plastic trim

While I love the vehicle I have not been happy with how the plastic trim looks on it. The worst is the plastic running along the base of the windshield where the wipers mount. It was almost bleached white. The rear bumper, that gets a lot of abuse from the dogs, looks bad. There are steps toward the back on each side that were faded. The door handles looked lousy. The plastic’s poor appearance had been exacerbated by my accidental brushing with wax when I was waxing the paint.

I have tried a lot of products to make the plastic look better. They would all look only okay when done and then quickly fade to their previous bad appearance. I was unhappily accepting there was nothing I could do about it.

One product I had never tried was Turtle Wax Trim Restorer so I decided it give it a try.

Application

I started with the worst areas first — the area at the base of the windshield. I started applying it and took a picture of how the applied area compared to the faded plastic.

Then I did a test area on the rear bumper and let it sit overnight.

The next day I went hog wild. I applied another coat on the wiper area, I finished the rear bumper, I did the entire front bumper and the black honey comb grill. I moved to the sides and did the side mirrors and the plastic that holds them to the vehicle, I did the door handles, the running boards, plastic strips that run along the bottom of the door, the side steps that wrap around to the rear bumper. I checked the front of the luggage rack and found it was also faded plastic so I coated it and the brackets that hold the rest of the rack. Lastly I did the plastic where the windows slide up and down.

The package says to apply the restorer, allow it to sit for 10-15 minutes, and then wipe with a microfiber cloth. Microfiber doesn’t absorb so all that did was wipe it around without removing the excess. That worked fine for the areas needing additional coats, but I didn’t want the finished areas to get gooey by letting the excess sit there. When areas were completely restored I wiped them down with a cotton towel to remove any excess.

Results

What I found is there are very different types of plastic on my one vehicle. The front bumper needed one coat to be restored to beautiful color. The door handles needed about three coats. The uber faded wiper area needed five coats. The cool thing is I didn’t know the wiper area and door handles were black — they were so faded I thought they were gray. Now they look like new black plastic. Don’t expect all areas to react the same — go by appearance and keep putting on coats until the color looks great.

Side step before – don’t know if you can tell how really faded and nasty it looked.

Side step after using restorer – in person it looks gorgeous

Wiper area after – it’s black now!

 Front bumper and grill look awesome.

The front of the rack looks like new.

Now the real test is how long it lasts. The package says up to 3 months. I will post an update on how it holds up and how long it is until I feel the need to treat it again.

I think it looks great for an eight year old vehicle 🙂