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wtgrantham

OK so maybe a crazy question for the restoration experts, The white Velox plugs are rare and expensive and the black ones seem to be plentiful and cheap, anyone ever spray paint a set of black ones white? Any thoughts on doing this? Would seem to be feasible since they aren't touched very much except during installation.

verktyg

Painting rubber can be problematic for several reasons. For starters the paint layer will need to be thick enough to conceal the black.

Thicker coatings tend to have a hard shell and when applied to a flexible material like rubber can crack. A water base acrylic type paint (frequently mislabeled as "latex" paint) could get around this but it may not adhere well to the rubber.

Depending on the rubber compound, black could bleed through any cracks in the paint. Also solvent based paints can dissolve a little of the surface and cause bleed through too.

You could try installing a plug and then painting it white with some flat "latex based" acrylic wall paint. It might work well and if the plugs are installed before painting there be no flexing of the rubber. The water based paint can be fairly easily removed if it doesn't work.

Before painting the rubber I would clean the plugs with a mild solvent like rubbing alcohol to remove any mold release compound on the surface.

Paint sticks great to rubber when you don't want it too like overspray from autobody work! Crying or Very sad

BTW, The black pigment in most rubber is called "carbon black" and it comes from oil or coal preprocessing operations. It's what's leftover and is "usually" but not always high purity carbon. It can also contain varying amounts of left over sulfur which helps in the rubber vulcanizing process. That's part of the reason some cheap rubber products smell so bad (plus other residual chemicals too).