drck1000

Hello all.

I noticed this morning that the trim on the rear door on the driver's side has some light scratches and a single deeper scratch that you can feel with your finger nail that is about 3/4" long. The scratches look like someone was wearing a ring or their watch caught the trim when closing the rear door. They don't appear to be through to anything black (I assume that the metallic trim is just plating over a plastic trim piece). The lighter scratches look darker when the light is at a certain angle, but is metallic/silver again when looking almost straight on. The deeper scratch looks metallic/silver in the scratch itself.

Have any of you had scratches like this? If so, would a simple metal polish work to buff it down? Or is the metallic plating so thin that any polishing would eat right through it and expose black plastic below (if that's what is below). I would like to get rid of them or even just make it so that it's less noticable. While it does bother me slightly, I think that I can live with it as-is if there is a high likelihood that polishing the area might leave a black spot below. Or are these trim piece replaceable? If so, I might wait unti they got all beat up and then replace them.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks,
Layne

jwa

I'm sure you could buy the trim pieces, but they're not likely to come cheap. Before I tried buffing the scratches out, you might try using a bit of chrome paint to fill the scratches in and see how that looks.

drck1000

I called my local Lexus dealer's part's department and they said that the trim piece goes for $225 and probably about 2 hours of labor to install per piece. Forget that. Maybe if it was $50 for the part and $50 for the labor, then maybe. Will try a light pass with a metal polish that I used to clean up the exhaust tips (Meguiar's Metal Polish). If that doesn't do anything, then I'll try to find some chrome paint. I'll probably end up just living with it.

jwa

Assuming the trim pieces can be removed without damage, you can take them to any autobody shop and ask them to paint them for much less than $225.