I have a week's worth of vacation coming up and this is the project I've chosen for that week. The plan is to remove, paint, and reattach as much of the chrome on the Runner as I can. It will all be painted either Matte Black or Satin Black, probably the latter.

Does anyone know or have suggestions how to remove the chrome pieces and strips from the truck? There are 4 chrome strips: under the doors on the left and right, on the front bumper, and on the rear bumper.

The main chrome pieces I'm curious about removing are the roof rails, the piece on the grill with the toyota emblem on it, and the pieces surrounding the fog lamps. Any ideas or suggestions on how to remove any of these pieces?

For the roof rails, I'm assuming that I would just pop off the 4 plastic end-caps and unbolt the roof rails, but I am not sure if this will work.

(I'd also like to remove and paint the large, chrome 4RUNNER logo on the rear hatch, but I can't think of a good way to paint it so that I can leave the 4RUNNER lettering and space inside the Toyota emblem the same color it is right now.)

Suggestions on specific paint would be appreciated as well. I figured I would just use Krylon Fusion Satin Black and Satin Clearcoat for the plastic pieces and use the same for the roof rails AFTER I've rust primered it.

Thanks!

Hey DM, Harper7 has some experience with removing pieces off of a 5th gen., I'd wait for him to show up here!

BTW...I like your idea about the 'silver pieces'...I'd go satin black myself!

Mike

the toyota emblem on the front is real easy to remove. painting it black was one of the first things i did. just pop your hood, remove the black cover which is held down by pop pins reach down there and feel for the clips that hold the emblem in. if you release one of the sides it will pop right out.

for paint, use Krylon fusion, it's perfect for plastic. good luck on those other pieces. i assume they are glued on, so you'll need to heat them up to soften the glue to remove.

DM, here's a photochop of your SR5 with a 'gray' and a 'black' bumper accent (along with some other embellishments ):





I don't know man, I'm liking the gray over the black in this particular case.

Mike

Thanks Mike!

hmmm... you're right. it does look better. I might try black (to see how it looks) and then convert to gray (if it sucks) for the front and rear bumper strips, or I might just go straight to gray for these 2 pieces.

Dood....... probably be easier to just pm me for individual parts that you want to take off one at a time and I'll help you. How mechanically inclined are you?

I'd have to write a book to explain it all at once.They are all plastic clip on except the door handles,lift gate emblem and roof rack.The back piece with the 4-R-U-N-N-E-R logo is very hard as you have to take the lift gate apart.

The front and rear long strips can't come off unless you remove the bumper covers to reach the clips so easier to do them on the bumper.

Hey y'all, guess how many places I had to go to searching for Krylon Fusion in Flat Black? Count with me if you will...

1. Walmart
2. Lowes
3. Home Depot
4. Pep Boys
5. Second Walmart
6. Second Lowes
7. Third Walmart
8. Autozone
9. K-Mart
10. Michaels

AND I STILL HAVE NOT FOUND IT!!! Why did I go to SO many places instead of just ordering from the internet you might ask. I have an unexpected day off and was going to complete this project on short notice so I didn't have time to order off the net and wait for it.

Can you believe this? I'm FURIOUS I can't find it without having to resort to the internet (which I might just have to do now)!




EDIT: I finished the roof rails/end-caps and front Toyo emblem/horizontal piece in Fusion Satin Black. I regret going with Satin Black not because it looks bad, but because I think it probably could have looked much better in Flat Black. Just a tip to you all and food for thought. Pics up soon in my Mod Thread.

I've always wanted to do that!

Mike

I've also decided that Doodman is lying about installing the Pioneer until I see pics of it

LOL. I see your skepticism and raise you some evidence (see my Mods Thread in a few minutes).

Totally.

Step 1: Buy supplies shown below if you want to convert chrome to satin black. If you want flat black, go out and buy that instead (I recommend flat black but it's very hard to find in Krylon Fusion).


Step 2: Buy a plastic Dropcloth from Dollar Store for a buck and cover the entire side of truck. Then, cut out a piece of plastic so the handles are exposed through plastic.


Step 3: Using playing cards, insert them between the handle and actual door. For the most part, you should be able to wedge them in there. For the areas where you can't wedge them in there, just tape them in place. The cards serve as excellent protectors against paint on the actual door itself.


Step 4: Sand down the area to be painted using 320 sandpaper.
Step 5: Next, get a wet paper towel and wipe down the area well to remove all the sand filings and any loose dirt and grime.

Step 6: Shake can of paint for a minute and apply first coat being sure to start well off the door handle and ending well off the door handle. DO NOT douse the handle with the first coat. Even if the first coat appears very very light, that is OK. TRUST ME ON THIS ONE BECAUSE I SCREWED UP ON ONE DOOR HANDLE since I put a heavy coat on with the first coat. REMEMBER: put on LIGHT coats and you will need to put on 6-10 coats. I read somewhere that I needed about 3 coats of black paint. This was the mistake I made on the handle that I ended up screwing up. On all the other handles, I did a good 7-8 light coats, and the results were BEAUTIFUL.


Step 7: That's pretty much it. Be careful removing the playing cards and plastic dropcloth as the newly painted surface is fragile for the next 7 days while the paint cures and bonds to the plastic door handles. I drove 3 hours on the highway at 70mph that same day that I finished these handles and thankfully didn't have any rocks fly up and chip away the paint.


What I would do differently if I could go back in time or what I would recommend to you all:
*I would definitely put on 7-8 quick light coats instead of 3-4 medium coats. TRUST ME ON THAT ONE.
*I also would have used a paint thinner, mineral spirits, or some other chemical that would remove all the hidden grease and grime (per Harper's recommendation). This is because, on the one handle that I screwed up, I think I unsuspectingly left some of my finger oils on the handle and so the paint didn't stick well and then started chipping and cracking within 20min of paint application. Because of this, I now have to find a free day to sand that one handle down completely and re-do that handle.
*I would use the Krylon Fusion Flat Black instead of the Satin Black. IMO, it just looks a LOT better (not that the satin black looks bad). I painted the front toyo logo and horizontal piece in satin black and will prolly repaint it to flat black.
*Wear a mask. I did not wear one. Instead I relied on holding my breath for 30 sec each time I went in to the garage to apply a coat. This stuff can irritate your throat pretty bad.
*I would do the painting indoors where you do NOT have a breeze going. This is because you don't want a breeze to blow dust and lint onto the freshly painted and wet surface.

I'm not done yet. I still have the rear '4RUNNER' logo, chrome strips, and fog light surrounds to do but here is a pic of the final product so far which I like MUCH better than with the chrome accents:

For the wipe down prep, I would recommend denatured alcohol.

Otherwise, looking good and a job well done.

Kudos on the blackout treatments, they're looking great on the Magnetic Gray. Also, thanks for sharing the details, pointers and photos. I think this treatment is right for Classic Silver, and am taking a great interest in what you're doing without incurring the expense of purchasing the pieces from the Trail package. I have a few questions:

- Did you do the chrome strip on the lower sides? How did you do this?

- Did you do the same to your roof rails? If so, what do you perceive to be the durability of this paint. I'm going to be installing some Yakima crossbars for transporting bicycles and kayaks. Do you think the rail grabbing pieces for the crossbars and other natural contact with the rails will scratch through the paint, or does it seem to bond well in the durable sense. Thanks in advance.

Thanks! Price was a major factor for me since I'm on a student budget for another year or so. And the fact that it only cost me less than $15 total for this entire project is IMO amazing. Thanks to harper for the inspiration with his vehicle.

Not yet. When I get a free day, I plan on doing these strips as well as the rear '4RUNNER' logo, and the fog light surrounds. The strips will be difficult and I'll have to do some thinking about it. You can take them off, but that would require removing the bumper and other technical stuff which I'm not very learned in so I'm wanting to paint them while the strips are attached as they are. I might just tape them off very carefully and see how that goes. If you look at the picture of the Runner below, he has his strips blacked out, and I think it looks good.

For the rails, I did those before I did the handles and went with satin black (in retrospect I wish I'd picked flat black) since I had no experience. I used the same procedure with the rails, except I used 80 grit instead of 320 grit sandpaper. This was another mistake I made. This sandpaper was too rough and put several scratches that were too deep to be covered even after painting. Luckily, those deep scratches are on the internal side of the rails and can't be seen. As for the durability, I did use Krylon Fusion for Plastic on the METAL rails, so I couldn't tell you about durability since I don't know if the paint will bond to metal (I know for sure it bonds to plastic though). I plan on putting on crossbars myself, but I don't really care if it scratches through the paint because it won't be visible since it's on the internal side of the rail and out of view. I'll post up the results about scratches in a couple weeks when I put on the crossbars. Hope this helps and if you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask.

(Not my rig btw)