Hey, it’s Tony. Thanks for watching my video and checking out the blog today. Let’s talk about How To Paint Your Car Like A Pro Even If You’re A Newbie.
If you want to learn more about auto body and paint, watch me do a step-by-step touch up job on this BMW Z3M.
The whole front was messed up with rock chips. We touched up the front bumper cover, painted the hood and redo the quarter panel at the backend. I did everything from my home garage.
Keep watching this video if you want to learn more. Enjoy!
All we really have to do is to get a screwdriver to take the grill off. We’ll use a 240-grit to sand out all the bad clear coat and imperfections. Then, we’ll feather out the chip marks and cut out all the orange peel and imperfections.
If you look closely, you can see some fish eye on the clear. You could clearly see that it was painted before. You can also see that they didn’t remove the grills when they painted it. You can see a run of clear coat. We’ll get it all nice, flat and take out all the imperfections.
We have a little bit scratching in the plastic. We can primer it, then fill it with glaze putty. Then, water sand it with 400-grit, give it a quick coat of primer and sand it again. You’ll then be ready for paint.
The whole goal of prepping before paint is to take out the imperfections like this orange peel. You want it to get matte looking like how I show you in the video. Remember this is not the final grit. We’ll finish it off with 400-grit before we paint.
This dent I show you in the video is so small. We’ll scuff the area with 80-grit by hand and put a skin of bondo. You don’t have to grind all the way down to metal. You’re just doing more work than you have to.
It’s important to always blow off all the areas that you going to put body filler on and the body repair areas, including under the hood.
It’s always good to have clean parts. I sprayed degreaser, hit it with a brush and wash it off. Check out the video as I show you how I use the wax and grease remover on this part.
Watch the video as I show you an example of a body filler that sat for a couple of weeks. There was a non-VIP member who threw it all out because he saw a glaze on top. That was wrong. You just have to make sure to mix it up.
For every golf ball size of body filler, put 8 drops of hardener. In this example, I put a little more hardener because I want it to harden quickly so we can get things done fast.
Rasping saves time and allows you to shape filler quickly. Make sure you don’t push too hard when sanding. Otherwise, you’ll distort the panel and have uneven sanding.
I screwed up on the body filler on the bumper cover. This is what happens when you don’t put enough hardener in your body filler. It didn’t dry so it was sticky. I had to scrape it off with a metal putty knife.
You would know that you have a wet body filler when it still feels tacky after a few hours. It just clogs the sandpaper when you rub some sandpaper on it.
Now, we have a new skin coat of bondo. We’re going to rasp it to take off the high edges. Then, do a final block sand with 80-grit.
As you can see in the video, we’re spraying a good 2-3 heavy coats of Evercoat filler primer on all of our panels. We’ll also do some dry sanding with the use of our DA Sander. Finally, we’ll cut this down with 400-grit wet sand.
You’ll always want to finish by hand because you can feel all the little imperfections and you’ll see exactly how it comes out once it’s painted.
Then, I’m popping off the rear trunk emblem. I was supposed to paint only the top strip, but then I decided to just do the whole trunk because I saw some imperfections.
Again, it’s very important to wash the entire car before you do any paint job. Blow it off and make sure it’s super dry. I let it dry for a day before I started working on the car again. Now, we’re masking the car after I blew it off (again).
Here’s the Omni Plus. This is a good base coat and it’s about $100 for a quart of paint. Remember, this base coat is a 1:1 mixture with your reducer.
You don’t have to worry about overspray when you’re doing base coat clear coat. It’s not that bad compared to a single-stage enamel paint job. Single-stage enamel paints are very thick.
You can tack between base coat when it’s dry. But, never tack between clear coat.
When spraying your bumper covers, you need to make sure that you’re getting all the areas. You may have to adjust your nozzle from a wide fan to a narrow fan to get into some of these areas. I show you how to do that step-by-step in the LearnAutoBodyAndPaint VIP Course.
This BMW is a huge project. I go over every step and explain each process carefully within VIP. This video however, is just an overview so you can get an idea of how it’s done.
Now, we’re adding our first coat of clear to our panel. I start off with a medium wet coat. Never be afraid of laying it on. If your clear coat looks dry, it’s because you’re not putting enough clear on it. Make sure to lay it on glossy.
A lot of times, you’ll see specks of dots in your clear coat. That’s fine because it’s just atomizing on the panel. You might see little bubbles but it disappears after it flows out onto your panel.
We’re giving this two heavy coats of clear by House of Kolor. Make sure you get every spot and don’t miss any of it.
You don’t have to be scared of runs when you’re doing clear coat because you can fix it by color sanding and buffing. The only time you have to worry about it is if you’re spraying pearls or flakes in your clear coat. That’s why I really recommend the newbies to just work with clear clear coats.
I hope you enjoyed the video. I could have added some more but I wanted to keep it short and simple.
If you want to learn more about step-by-step auto body, restore your classic or do a custom paint job, I can show you exactly how to do it. Go check out the LearnAutoBodyAndPaint VIP Program.
We have thousands of members and I’m sure you’ll love VIP. Don’t forget to grab your FREE 85-Page Auto Body And Paint Manual. Also, please Like, Share and Comment on the video. Tell me what you think!
Talk soon! Thanks!
Tony
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