My Tailgate Bowtie Fix

Wolfmansbrudda · March 13, 2012

So about a year after I bought my '07 Silverado the large, gold tailgate badge on my tailgate got water behind it and started cracking and deteriorating from the inside out. Many of you have had this issue (and many of you have just said "screw it" and then removed it). I however, like the bowtie badge and almost just went and ordered a new one. But then I decided to try and mess around to see if I could fix it first.

When I started picking at it, the transparent yellow plastic top piece just came off right away. It was simply painted metallic silver from the inside and then siliconed in place to the chrome surround part of the badge (bottom piece). Since the transparent overlay (top piece) is tinted yellow, it makes the bowtie look metallic gold. For this repair I never removed the chrome base part of the badge, just the transparent top piece.

Once the top piece was removed I used a plastic scraper and my fingernails to remove all of the silver metallic paint from the inside (backside) of it, it all just kind of flaked out. I then used laquer thinner to remove all of the silcone adhesive that remained on the chrome bottom piece (still attached to tailgate).

Here's a pic of both pieces separated and cleaned:

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In order to make things easier I removed the tailgate (no tools required) and brought it down into my basement on two sawhorses so the badge would lay flat while I worked on it.

Once the two parts of the badge were clean, all I had to do was paint the inside of the transparent yellow top piece, let it dry, then use more adhesive silicone to re-glue the badge together. I didn't have metallic silver, but I did have some light gray spray paint made specifically to adhere to plastic. Since I used gray and not a lighter metallic silver, the badge became a slightly darker, muted gold.

One last thing I did after the badge was back together, was fill the crack between the two pieces with silicone on the outside, basically just running a bead around the outside edge of the transparent top piece. I then just ran my finger across to force the silcone into the crack only, keeping the rest of the badge clean. This I hope will keep water from getting in behind the top piece and working the paint loose again. Since I'm a guy who washes his truck pretty much once a week, I wanted to make this badge repair something I wouldn't worry about down the road.

I'm pretty happy with it. I liked the gold on my bowtie to begin with and wanted to keep it, but it seemed to stick out a little too much. Now it's still gold, just not as bright and obnoxious.

Here's a comparison between the stock color and my new color (sorry I didn't take any pics of my flaked-out badge before I fixed it):

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