Paint Repairs on Your Vehicle
Well, I wanted to repaint the hood so it did not look as bad. I didn’t want to take it to a dealer or paint shop as they cost a lot to do any work so I decided to do it myself. I know it will not look professional, I would be using cans of spray paint but it would look better than the touch up paint and the gobs of peeling pieces that had been coming off and continued to peel off.
I would strip the whole hood of the rest of the peeling paint and sand it down, then paint it with a primer and then a top coat of the original light metallic blue. The primer is the problem with the old paint job. Primer is a sprayed on coat that helps the top coat of paint to adhere to the bare metal of the vehicle. Primer is necessary as it bonds to the bare metal better than the paint. The paint does not adhere as good to the bare metal as it is mainly made for the coloring of the car and not adhering to bare metal.
So I started with removing the bug guard on the hood, there’s four screws on mine. Then I used a razor blade scraper to scrap off the old paint, it peeled off quite easily in my case. If you are doing a repair and want to get a few spot fixed on yours you can do this easily in much the same way as I did on the whole hood.
There are a few steps to repair the paint or touch up paint on your vehicle. First you have to prepare the surface of the car and the area to repaint. You have to remove the rust, if any, and sand the area, then primer it and paint the top coat. To remove rust you scrap it off with sand paper or a wire brush if there is a lot. If you have a bubble or rusted through spot, you can scrap it off and scrub the rust with a wire brush to remove any rust. Then use body filler to fill the hole.
Body filler is a car putty that works just like spackle in your home. First you have to get rid off all the rust and sand all the area with rough and then fine sandpaper so that any area that is rusted is gone. If there is a whole that goes all the way through you need to sand around the inside to get the piece of backer to glue to the backside of the cars body. The backside of the metal where the piece of backer is going has to be clean and rough so that the piece of metal you are gluing in sticks well the inside of the cars body.
You use a spatula to fill the area that is rusted and then sand smooth. If the hole is all the way through, you may have to use some kind of backing to start the hole filling. Use a piece of metal larger than the width of the hole but just under the height, so that you can fit the piece into the hole and slide it back behind the metal and center it in the hole. Use a hole in the center of the piece of metal with a wire through it to hold the metal backer against the metal side of the car. Use an adhesive to glue the metal to the side of the car such as JB Weld for metal. This will glue the piece in so that you can fill the rest with body putty.
When you have the area you are going to paint sand with fine sand paper, you should use 0000 fine steel wool to do a fine sanding job on the whole area to get the sanding scratches out. You should not see any scratches in the paint or steel if you want a really good job. Me, I’m not so picky, I just sanded with rough steel wool and painted.
Use a primer to make sure you have any bare metal covered before painting with the top coat. Use a primer that will not show through the top coat, such as my car has a light blue color for the top coat so I used a gray primer, if you have a lighter color paint for the top coat use gray, for darker colors use black primer.
You can buy the glue to hold the backer piece, the body filler or putty, primer and different colored paints for vehicles at super Walmart or a local auto parts store. I got my stuff at Walmart due to the lower cost. A can of car spray paint is about four to five dollars, the rest of the materials are less expensive.
If you have some spots that are rusted badly and want to make sure you stop the rust you can buy a paint that turns the rust into primer. You scrap off any rust you can and use a wire brush to get rid of some, and to make the rust ready for the spray paint. Then you sand it smooth for the painting. Paint with the rust to primer paint and then paint with the top coat after it is dry.
All of this work should be done at a decently warm temperature outside, around sixty to seventy degrees outside. If it’s too cold or too hot outside the paints and primers you use will not adhere to the car well. Also if it’s windy there are things blowing around that might stick to your paint job, so pick a calm and warm day to do your repair work.
To do the major job that I did on my hood, I peeled off the paint from the whole hood, then sanded with rough and then very smooth sand paper. Then again sanded with rough steel wool, then some fine steel wool. I did not get all the scratches out of the hood, I’m not concerned about looks that much, just that it doesn’t rust out on me. I then painted the whole hood with gray primer and let it dry for an hour. Then painted with the cans of top coat, the metallic light blue, I used two cans to paint the hood.
I used plastic around the hood so that I didn’t get any paint or primer on the grill or window and trim around that. I propped the hood open to get around the edges of the hood that normally are even with the rest of the front of the car. On the sides I had some spots that were peeling so I painted there too, I’ll get the rest of the spots on the rest of the vehicle soon. There are some where the van has rusted in spots but the hood seems to be the major peeling spot on the van.
I have been repairing the rust spots from time to time before the get worse. You should do this so to prevent having to do major repairs. It takes a little time and when your finished you can be proud of a job well done.
