What is Mr Black?
Where we live in South East Queensland, we see a hell of a lot of cars on the road with faded, greying plastic trims, and it upsets us.
This happens as the majority of plastic trim on cars is a polymer based ABS plastic, that's not capable of withstanding long term UV and environmental exposure, which is a bit of a bugger as we live in one of the worst places for this! You can spot this type of unsealed plastic on many modern cars, usually black in colour and moulded for bumpers, side skirts, windscreen cowls, side mirrors etc. This type of material slowly degrades over time thanks to "photo-degradation" by the suns' UV rays slowly breaking down the bonds of the plastics polymers. Plastic manufacturers have tried to prevent this by placing UV stabilisers and absorbers in their plastics, however if the plastics are not regularly maintained they will still slowly degrade, fading and greying, then at the end of its life it's very brittle and will crack, meaning they will need to be replaced.
We began the process of developing a trim restorer after testing a few leading retail silicone based products on some faded bumpers. While they looked OK intially, we found them to be a band aid fix, in that they didn't last longer than a couple of weeks, or till the first downpour of rain where they got annoying water run marks from them. For the amount of work needed to apply them, we were not enthused with that result. We then tested a few highly reputed international "professional brands", and although they lasted longer than a month, they did not last anywhere near the 6 to even 12 months promised. We guessed they were simply never intended or built to handle Australian conditions. We then initiated what was to become 3 years of development with our chemists, as we thought we could surely make something better than what was already out there!
Our goal was to make a long lasting, silicone free product, that would restore the plastic to a natural looking finish, that's not affected by the Aussie climate, won't wash off and that is compatible to be used with our washes and protective sealants as well.
We went through 30+ formula revisions that included extensive outdoor, real world weather testing. One of our test bumpers that has the final formula has now been outside in the direct sun and weather for over 2 years, and I'm happy to say the test area we did still looks great, as you can see below.
Evaluating our final formula's of Mr Black on the 1st of March 2018, the image on the right is the same bumper, two years later to the date. Lower right formula is what we went with as it was the nicest to use with epic longevity.
Mr Black is the name we gave this final formula and it's a 100% silicone free trim restorer, that's ideal for rejuvenating your sun damaged and faded unpainted exterior plastics. It's designed to work on unpainted, black textured plastics such as: bumpers, mirrors, windscreen cowls, door handles, running boards, side and window trims, wiper arms & more.
Some of the key features of our Mr Black:
- Rejuvenates sun damaged, unpainted exterior black plastics to a rich, darker finish.
- Restores a natural mid sheen finish, that's not greasy or oily.
- Silicone free, so it won't wash off or attract dust once cured.
- Uses concentrated, specialist plastic dyes that penetrate into the plastic.
- Very concentrated, so a little product goes a long way!
- Excess wipes off easily from paint, headlights, chrome, alloy, mirrors & glass.
- It lasts for up to a year on most hard ABS plastic, textured trims, and longer with further applications over older coats.
- Real world tested and developed in Australia's harsh UV environment, so it bloody well works.
