How To Get Scratches Out of ATV Plastic

The all-terrain vehicles are specifically made to rule through difficult terrains and get the ultimate off-road experience.

When you are trying on your hands-on difficult rocky obstacles or raging through the woods, it is very common for the ATV to get scratches not only on the body color but also on the ATV plastic. Atv enthusiasts love their off-road vehicles and most of them clean and wash their ATVs after every single ride.

But still, they end up with scratches on their ATVs all over the plastic surfaces. Sometimes the ATV plastic also shows up cracks due to a low impact on the trails.

For most off-road vehicle fans, these scratches and cracks wouldn’t be something they can easily ignore. But not everyone is aware of the ways they can get their ATV plastic-free of scratches and keep the vehicle brand new.

If you don’t use the right techniques, your ATV plastic can end up worse. The glossiness of the plastic can wear off if you don’t use the right products which are suitable for the purpose.

A lot of products are available in the market nowadays which if used correctly, can quite smoothly remove the surface scratches from your ATV and return the shiny gloss of the plastic which might have dulled. The scratch removal process would not require you to take the ATV into some fancy garage where they would make an astonishing bill just for making your ATV plastic better.

Many times this happens that the owner of the ATV makes scratches on the vehicle unwillingly while cleaning it.

What happens is that when the ATV goes through rocky or muddy terrains, many times micro-sized rocks or dust decomposes on the ATV plastic, and when the owner wipes a dry cloth on it the particles leave a distinct scratch on the plastic body.

The scratches and cracks are easier to deal with if dealt with soon after it happens. The older the scratches become, the more difficult is to remove them, even with the best ATV products in the US market. There are many ways to deal with scratches which you will learn here.

Using a heat gun to restore plastic

There are several heat guns available in the US market and they work excellently in removing scratches from your ATV plastic. The heat gun is effective in removing not only the surface scratches but also the deep scratches present in your ATV plastic.

If your ATV is more than a few years old then some portions of the ATV plastic have faded in color; the heat gun is capable of fixing this very easily.

First, you need to take care of the ATV plastic and clean it. Use some alcohol in a towel and wipe it all over the ATV plastic. This is to abandon the oil patches and dirt stains all over the ATV plastic. This will make the surface ideal for the heat gun to do its best in making the ATV plastic good as new.

You need to use the heat gun with proper planning. Mark out a portion virtually in your mind about 10 inches in height and width before actually applying the hot gun.

Doing proper sectioning of the ATV plastic lets you fix your ATV without randomly doing a dissatisfying repair. Also, be careful at the edges where other essential components of the engine and tires are present.

The heat gun is very easy to use as a normal drill machine so don’t worry about how you would work with the heat gun. Turn it on in a higher heat setting and hold it about one inch away from the plastic body at all times. Then you need to place the heat mostly in positions where the ATV plastic body has scratches.

You need to always apply the heat in a circular motion of your wrist. While continuing the circular motion of your hand move the heat gun either in the up and down direction or in a side and side direction.

Be cautious about not heating a particular portion for more than a couple of seconds, as this would get the plastic spot overheated.

You will be able to notice the scratches go away, so whenever a spot of plastic gets removed from the surface scratches or deep scratches, then move on to the next plastic body of the ATV.

Use a premium product like armor all on a clean cloth and rub it all over the plastic body of the ATV once it gets cold. This would not only return the shine of the ATV plastic but also protect the plastic body from easy scratches in the future.

Using sandpaper and plastic bonder

Any type of surface scratches that is not very deep into the plastic body can be managed using good quality wet sandpaper. There are many products in the US market, and based on the grit number, you have to understand the strength of the wet paper.

You need to use sandpaper specifically on the spots of the ATV plastic where scratches are present. Using the 1500-grit wet sandpaper works amazingly on any light scratches.

Rubbing the sandpaper does involve some physical labor, and the sandpapers also work well for not only light scratches but also deep and medium scratches too.

For deeper scratches, you will need a lot of sandpapers of different grit numberings. You need to first use the lower number sandpapers like four hundred and five hundred, then move up to the higher numbers.

This would be highly laborious, but you would get the deep scratches abandoned. The sandpaper works by removing small portions of the plastic from the surface. When you rub the scratched portions of the plastic body, a thin upper layer is getting removed.

So if you remove the deeper scratches with the help of sandpaper, then the ATV plastic remains at greater risk of getting cracked in the future.

The product, like a plastic bonder gap filler, works excellently for getting rid of deep scratches. One of the best products in the US market is the JB Weld plastic bonder gap filler. This product is like a wax substance that you need to apply in the gaps of the atv scratches.

There will be two tubes in the product, and you have to mix these two in equal proportions and then apply them to the deep scratches. After applying, you need to let it stay in the gaps for about twenty minutes.

Then after providing an additional ten minutes, you can use the sandpaper to rub off the excess settlement on the atv plastic. Experts recommend using putty after twenty minutes to cut off the larger chunks if you have applied a lot in excess.

This makes the sandpaper use much easier and less laborious. Taking care of the plastic scratches on your ATV is very important as these scratches get deeper with time and in a long duration might also help in the cracking up of the plastic.

For extremely deep scratches, use a hot staple gun kit

Some scratches are extremely deep and are very close to ending up in a crack. For these kinds of scratches and cracks on your ATV, you would need a hot staple gun kit. Experts prefer the ASTRO 7600 hot staple gun kit for the best results.

These staple guns come along with specially made staples. These staples get heated up and in a molten state, need to be inputted in the cracks or the extreme scratches of the atv plastic.

These staples make the ATV plastic stronger and also let it be flexible at the same time. The intelligent way of doing this is to use the heated staples on the backside of the atv plastic.

In this way, the atv plastic doesn’t look ugly, and using sandpaper on the excess makes the plastic more smooth.

Conclusion

When you keep driving the all-terrain vehicle with the deep scratches on the ATV plastic not being taken care of, this leads to cracks on the atv plastic. If the ATV plastic ends up with cracks, you won’t have many options. You would have to get a new atv plastic and get it replaced.

As mentioned here, there are many ways you can get the plastic scratches on your atv fixed. Use the one that will suit your atv best and take care of the atv scratches.  Using a plastic restorer oil after fixing the scratches keeps the atv plastic protected to some extent and returns the gloss.