- Dec 11, 2002
- 18,409
- 39
- 91
So my bumper cracked apart from driving into a dirt ditch D:, don't ask how :twisted:.
And I had a dent on my fender one day randomly, which I still have no idea whatsoever how it got there.
But given that my car cost me $1200, I wasn't about to spend $500-800 at a body shop. so I took the DIY route, not expecting much.
First of all, I have to give mad props to mr bondo. Fixing cracks and dents is pretty damn easy with bondo, albiet very tedious and time consuming. I probably made at least 20 mixes of it for the job. Although I bought the basic bondo, so it wasn't that strong in holding the crack together. But i got a tube of JB weld for it, which probably holds better than any bondo. I put a nice weld on the backside of the crack, while bondoing up the outside of it.
For painting, I just looked up guides online. I sanded the surface down smooth with 180grit, then finished it with a 320grit for primer. Put on 3 coats of primer and did a 600wet.
Next the base coat was tricky. I needed to find the fine balance between getting a thin enough layer so the paint doesn't start sagging and dripping, and getting a thick enough layer so that the liquid adhesion could do its work so that I don't get a misty/orangepeel texture.
Needless to say, I ended up with two sags.
I could sand it out and retry, but from what I've read, you don't want to sand before the clear coat. But... I didn't much expectations that it looks perfect, given that this is my ghetto rattlecan fixup job, so I just clear coated over it.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU duplicolor clear coat. It ought to be called piss coat. It had added quite a strong amber/yellowish tinge to the paint. I ended up spending 2hrs of hard labor scrubbing it off with 320grit sandpaper(got to scrub out the drips too).
I resmoothed the surface with 600, then 1000, and busted out my $30 random orbital polisher with some nice 3M rubbing compound on it. It worked nicely to give it a mirror shine. :awe:
The fender bent was pulled out by drilling two holes and screwing screws in the holes, and then pulling it out with the rear of a hammer. I wasn't able to get a perfect pull this way, but I made up for it with some bondo.
Sanding through the paint was interesting, as this fender had been repainted 5 times!!11 Yes there was 5 layers of paint and primer.
Primering the fender was a bit tricky, as many parts of it kept giving me this frosty/webby texture when it cures. Not sure what causes it, but I was able to get rid of it from sanding it down a bit deeper with 180grit sandpaper and reprimering.
The whole thing took probably about 20-30hrs of work. It probably could've taken a pro a small fraction of the time, but this was a first.
tl;dr... pics
And I had a dent on my fender one day randomly, which I still have no idea whatsoever how it got there.
But given that my car cost me $1200, I wasn't about to spend $500-800 at a body shop. so I took the DIY route, not expecting much.
First of all, I have to give mad props to mr bondo. Fixing cracks and dents is pretty damn easy with bondo, albiet very tedious and time consuming. I probably made at least 20 mixes of it for the job. Although I bought the basic bondo, so it wasn't that strong in holding the crack together. But i got a tube of JB weld for it, which probably holds better than any bondo. I put a nice weld on the backside of the crack, while bondoing up the outside of it.
For painting, I just looked up guides online. I sanded the surface down smooth with 180grit, then finished it with a 320grit for primer. Put on 3 coats of primer and did a 600wet.
Next the base coat was tricky. I needed to find the fine balance between getting a thin enough layer so the paint doesn't start sagging and dripping, and getting a thick enough layer so that the liquid adhesion could do its work so that I don't get a misty/orangepeel texture.
Needless to say, I ended up with two sags.
I could sand it out and retry, but from what I've read, you don't want to sand before the clear coat. But... I didn't much expectations that it looks perfect, given that this is my ghetto rattlecan fixup job, so I just clear coated over it.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU duplicolor clear coat. It ought to be called piss coat. It had added quite a strong amber/yellowish tinge to the paint. I ended up spending 2hrs of hard labor scrubbing it off with 320grit sandpaper(got to scrub out the drips too).
I resmoothed the surface with 600, then 1000, and busted out my $30 random orbital polisher with some nice 3M rubbing compound on it. It worked nicely to give it a mirror shine. :awe:
The fender bent was pulled out by drilling two holes and screwing screws in the holes, and then pulling it out with the rear of a hammer. I wasn't able to get a perfect pull this way, but I made up for it with some bondo.
Sanding through the paint was interesting, as this fender had been repainted 5 times!!11 Yes there was 5 layers of paint and primer.
Primering the fender was a bit tricky, as many parts of it kept giving me this frosty/webby texture when it cures. Not sure what causes it, but I was able to get rid of it from sanding it down a bit deeper with 180grit sandpaper and reprimering.
The whole thing took probably about 20-30hrs of work. It probably could've taken a pro a small fraction of the time, but this was a first.
tl;dr... pics
Last edited:
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