2013 SANTE 210 side vent discoloration

[drenole]

Hey everyone, I tried to search for this and couldn’t find anything existing.

The side vents on my 210 have discolored to the point that they look almost yellow. Can I have them repainted (gel coat) or do I need to replace them? They’re not cheap at all to buy and look to be a major PITA to remove and replace but they also appear to be plastic and I’m not sure they can be recoated.

Anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks
Dre

[Cadesun]

Tagging along. Mine are just slightly off-colored (I'm guessing I'm the only one who notices) but I hand wax them 3x/year and spray wax weekly during the summer with the rest of the boat.

[drenole]

Yeah, I’m leaning towards masking them off, abrading the surface of the “white” plastic. Cleaning with acetone. Then spray painting with a high quality white that is made for plastic followed by a clear coat. Might have to use a primer first. I’ve seen on other boat forums (the hull truth) that you can spray paint the plastic parts on boats and it holds up for a few years. With my adjacent gunnels and hull being white, my only concern aside from adhesion is color matching. But right now they’re yellow so maybe anything is better! Hah

[drenole]

Here is a before and in-work combined. Didn’t have a really good before only of both.



After:



I ended up breaking the gloss with a high grit pad, masked, and sprayed with white krylon fusion gloss spray paint. They look soooo much better than that yellow crap. Will post some pics.

My complaint is that the krylon doesn’t really work well with a clear coat so I didn’t have the option to get the same quality of finish that made it look like a gel coat previously. That said, I would do it again.

Last piece of advice is be careful how tight you install it because you’ll eventually pull the plastic down to the point where you can spiderweb the paint and potentially even crack the plastic. It’s not structural so initial tight is more than good enough.

[bturner]

Another option may be to have them hydro-dipped especially if you can figure out some pattern you could incorporate like carbon fiber or something along those lines. My white Wet Sounds speakers turned yellow about 3 years after I bought them and were out of warranty. I had them painted to match the boat and added a carbon fiber pattern. They turned out great and still looked good 5 years later.

https://www.hydrodip.com/