ericgrau

iTrader: (1)

I had a very large dent in each of my front fenders, both from accidents from the past 2 owners. I'll go over how I un-dented and painted a new pair... without a compressor, without any prep work, without losing my dailer driver and with minimal time invested. The same technique may be extended to doors, the hood, and anything else removable.

I didn't want to work on such large dents, nor go without a car in the meantime, so I got a couple new fenders. One was $35 at the junkyard, with a small dent in it.

DENT REMOVAL
The only tools you will ever need to remove dents are a slapper, a power sander, some Bondo, and applicators, etc. for the Bondo. A slapper is an ~18" long x ~2" wide piece of flat, thick curved metal. You whack dents with it, hence the name "slapper". I got one in a slapper & dolly kit from Harbor Freight and tools. I kept the slapper plus one hammer from the kit (not for body work) and chucked the rest. With a slapper you can take out any dent in about 30 seconds, no matter how large, and with little risk of mistakes. Just hit it until flat. Get it within 1/8" of perfect, sand (per Bondo instructions) and Bondo the rest.

PAINT
I went to www.paintscratch.com to get a good match. There are probably other good places, but I haven't tried them. I painted my fenders with nothing but the spray cans, but they also recommend Preval for use with can paint. Preval sprayers are bottles with a disposable compressed air cartridge. Hardware stores are supposed to have them, or if not they can special order. While you're there you'll also need painters plastic and a plastic jumpsuit (to protect the paint from your shirt more than your shirt from the paint).

You'll need base coat and clear coat spray cans. If there is any exposed bare metal you'll need a primer can too. Get double what they say to get, unless painting a perfectly flat surface. Even then you'll want a little extra. Get extra primer and/or the high build primer if there are any scratches, pits, etc. in your part. If painting non-metals you'll need the Bulldog Adhesion Promoter. Get a pack of sandpaper per 2-3 square feet, one bottle of paint thinner, one bottle of wax & grease remover per 2 square feet, one tack cloth per part per day (primer + basecoat + clearcoat = 3 days), and a mask for the fumes. The total was about $150 per fender. It's not cheap, but you'll get a great paint job with little effort.

From there you follow their instructions. It takes about 1 day each for primer/base/clear coat, with roughly 30 minutes of painting per part and 4-5 hours of waiting in between coats. Find a video game or a book, etc. for the wait time. There's also setup time on top of that: about 2 hours or so on the 1st day, plus cleanup on the last day. And possibly a lot of sanding on the 1st day to get the surface right (or minor sanding at least to get it rough). I'll give some tips of my own later on, and I'll post some pics.

RE_GTUs

pics??

ericgrau

iTrader: (1)

Soon... I'll snap some this evening with my digital camera. In-progress pics were taken with a regular camera, so I'll have to develop those first. I still have to take them the fenders to a body shop to get them machine-buffed, but you won't be able to tell in a picture.

ericgrau

iTrader: (1)

I'm looking for memory for my hand-me-down digital camera. For now I took some pics with an old one.


You can see how well the new left fender matches the left fender on the car. The right side of the car was by a leafy gutter, so I wasn't about to lay that fender the same way. You can also see the dents in the front of both of my old fenders. You can't see the few pits and shirt-strands in the fender. Fortunately you have to be really close to see them, even in person. Yes, the left fender is distorted in the bottom rear.

Now for the guide:
I forgot a couple things you'll need:
A lint free terry cloth for applying the wax & grease remover.
A stopwatch so you know when it's time to apply the next coat. Preferably one with a multi-time display or else a seperate stopwatch for each part.

SETUP
Make sure you get at least 2 mil plastic to prevent tears. Tape it down and get your other paint supplies. Wear plastic overalls to prevent cloth fibers from getting in the paint (I learned the hard way). You might even want to wear a hairnet, though I only had to remove a couple hairs while painting.

SANDING
Remove any scratches, pits, etc. with 120 grit or finer sandpaper on a power sander. Sand with 220-400 grit to prep for primer.

PRIMER
Wipe the part down with a tack cloth. Apply wax & grease remover, if necessary. Spray on primer per can directions, applying many light coats rather than a couple thick coats. The base coat (i.e., the colored paint) is very thin and will not conceal even the smallest of scratches & pits. I found this out the hard way, and now have to put up with a few. So get the primer on nice and thick. For deeper scratches, use glazing putty before applying primer. Finally, after primer is dry, sand the primer with 400 grit sandpaper until perfectly smooth. Reapply primer and resand if necessary. This is how the surface of your fender will look, so get it right.

BASECOAT
Just spray on per website directions. Again, apply multiple light coats rather than a couple thick coats. There's no such thing as too thin, but if you go to thick the paint will run. Switch nozzles every coat, putting the old nozzle into a cup full of paint thinner so you can reuse it later (after letting it dry, of course).

paintscratch.com uses ultra-fine removable nozzles that deposit paint evenly in a light mist. Don't worry about how bad the primer looked before sanding, this will look a lot better. Resist the urge to switch fingers. Thumbs and middle fingers tend to get into the paint stream, causing more of a spittle than a fine mist to get onto your part! And sometimes the nozzle will drip on its own, especially after spraying for a while. If the "spittle" is thin, don't worry: You can cover it with the next coat. If it's thick you can dab it LIGHTLY with your fingertip. Don't try to remove it all or you'll make a mess of it and everything around it. Just get it a little thinner so it can be covered with the next coat. Worst case scenario you have to wait for the paint to dry, sand the defect with 1000 grit sandpaper and apply another coat. Otherwise do not sand, and certainly do not sand the final coat.

CLEARCOAT
Spray on using can directions. The clearcoat is similar to the primer, except it dries very fast. If you have 2 parts you can go back and forth between them without any wait time. You're probably used to the nice basecoat nozzles by now, so the splatter coming from the clearcoat spray cans is a bit disappointing. Don't worry, that's what buffing is for. Just keep the clearcoat thin enough so it doesn't run and you'll be fine. I covered the nozzle with a cloth every time I shook the can. It kept clearcoat from flying onto my hands and it dried off the top.

BUFFING
Get a shop to do it. I spent 6 hours trying to hand buff it and only finished the front-bottom section of the right fender. The rest is only partially buffed, which is why it's a little shinier in the pics. You can get an orbital buffer, but those have trouble with curved surfaces and there's a small chance you'll burn the paint. You can also get a professional rotary buffer, which is faster but will burn the paint with even a moment's inattention. If you sand the clearcoat first, you may be left with no more clearcoat.


Hope this helps. I'll post better pics when I get memory for my new camera (hopefully tomorrow).

rxloser

nice writeup. Not everyone's a perfectionist and if you can do it on the cheap and still have it good, thats great. I'm doing some similar work at the moment and wasnt sure how it would work out, good to know!!

ericgrau

iTrader: (1)

Forgot to mention that you use a tack cloth each day before you start, and to let the primer dry overnight before applying basecoat, let basecoat dry overnight before applying clearcoat and let the clearcoat dry for at least 3 days before buffing. As always, read all directions carefully and don't blame me if something goes wrong. That said, it's pretty hard to make any major screw-ups. I was surprised how easy it was and how nice it came out. Even in person the new fenders look like twins of the old ones, except a little shinier and without the large dents.

ericgrau

iTrader: (1)

Took fenders to a paint & body place. Guy said the clearcoat was too runny and it was too thin for him to sand it smooth. He opted to buff the pair for $25, without any guarantees. The runs remained, though most (but not all) of the spatter was erased. If I had put the clearcoat on thick I could have just paid the guy the same amount to do it ($100 for the pair). paintscratch.com's basecoat is nice, but their primer and clearcoat is just the same stuff as what you see in the auto store.

I'd say primer, sand and basecoat yourself, then take it somewhere for clearcoat and buff. But I haven't tried this myself and most places won't touch something they didn't paint themselves. Plus $25 a spray can is really expensive for paint. Still, IMO, it beats buying all the spray equipment for a one shot deal.

For my purposes, the fenders came out super-nice. But any auto-show or body shop (big or small) would cringe at all the dimples, fibers, runs, etc. I'm fine with all the flaws: You have to be within 3 feet to even see them, otherwise the fenders look like new.

"Sir, please step away from the spray cans." - another guy at the paint & body place.