But I've just sanded and painted another car. Not the entire car, but really any automotive painting is a giant pain in the ass, and it's something I'd just as soon avoid. At some point, I'll discuss what it took to paint my Talon in 1998 and 1999, and why I said I'd never ever paint a car again.
So now that I'm a giant giant liar, let's begin.
This all started with the hailstorm that hit Socorro on October 5, 20041. My Camry was summarily bashed to pieces.
Although I've since replaced all the cracked optics (windows, mirrors, blinkers, etc.), the paint received serious damage which I've left untouched until now.
In general, the damage to the body itself is cosmetic—in the battle of hail vs. metal, metal nearly always wins. The hail did, however, manage to remove or crack the paint in a bunch of spots and expose bare metal to the elements. In the battle of hail and rust vs. metal, hail and rust often win.
This has the net effect of turning largely cosmetic damange (which, honestly, I really don't care about) into structural damage. This probably wouldn't be a problem here in New Mexico because rust simply doesn't spread quickly, but it will be when I move to Seattle.
So, where to begin? The car, I suppose. Before:
Ignore my legs. As you can see, the hail dented the trunk metal enough to completely chip off two large sections of paint. It also took enough layers off to completely expose the metal, which now has a nice layer of surface rust on it. The rest of the damaged paint on the car looks similar, but marginally less severe, than this. A lot of the damage occurs at reinforced panel edges, where hail hit unsupported metal, which then creased at the reinforcement and cracked the paint.
Here's another picture of some already-sanded spots showing all the damage along the panel edges. I had to remove the side marker to some of the damaged areas.
Anyway, the first step is to grab a bucket, fill it with water, and then stick your head in it until you drown, because sanding a car is not fun.
Really, though, you need water. And sandpaper—wet/dry sandpaper, if you hadn't figured it out. I usually start out with 400 grit wet/dry automotive paper and work up from there. If you're doing more than a few spots (as in, a whole fucking car), then you'll probably want to start with 200. Or pay some immigrants well below minimum wage to sand it for you.
Definitely use a sanding block, too, or you'll rub your fingers right off. I got a really nice heavy rubber 3M block for around $7 eight or ten years ago. It's worth it.
And that's about it. Start sanding. Use lots and lots of water to keep the sandpaper from getting clogged, because it will. Those of you who are used to wood sanding will probably be really surprised how long sandpaper lasts when it's cleaned properly. I usually go through a small sheet every hour or so of intense2 sanding.
These dents are mostly sanded through. There are a few things to note in this picture:
- The thing hanging to the left is the rubber moulding fitted around the upper edge of the door. It's easy to remove and replace.
- That white mess is sanded paint. The primer is a light beige and, when sanded, makes a giant white mess. It's often necessary to wash everything down to see what the hell is going on.
- Yes, I got a ton of water on the inside of the car.
It usually takes around 5-10 minutes to sand each spot, although the first two or three go really quickly as the sandpaper is still really aggressive. I've hit all of the big spots on the Camry (and most of the small ones, although I'm still taking the smaller rock dings out of the hood) and it's taken me around 4 solid hours of sanding so far.
The next step is to wash the whole mess down, and hit everything you didn't do effective before, because you're surely missed something in that giant chalky mess.
The conventional wisdom (if you can call it that) for when to stop sanding is whenever you can't feel any ridges across the sanded surface. This is a real pain in the ass for me because I can't effectively feel all the little differences when the surface is wet, so I have to wait for it to dry3.
Once it dries, it looks something like this.
In the picture, you can see the two primer layers and the top color layer. There are also a ton of 400-grit scratches in the clear topcoat.
If you're planning on putting a full application of automotive paint over this (e.g., when completely repainting a car), then you'll want to work your way up progressively to 1500 grit. When doing spot work on an already-painted car, you'll want to go all the way to 3000 grit to make the topcoat shine.
But since my car has about a million fucking dents all over it, all I need to do is make sure the scratches are adequately filled so they don't show through the new paint. In this case, I hit everything again with some 1500 grit, which did the job.
The next step is to clean the living hell out of the car. I washed this twice and ran my hand over pretty much every area that will eventually get painted. The paint dust gets into everything and doesn't wash off with just water—it needs to be scrubbed off.
Once everything is dried, it needs to be hit again with a paper towel and then again with a tackcloth4. Tackcloth is nasty stuff and makes it impossible to do anything with your hands afterward...but it's really effective at picking up dust and oil from the metal surface.
So, time to paint.
Masking comes first. Regular masking tape works just fine—there's really no reason to get that hyperexpensive painter's tape, in my experience. Masking tape doesn't leave terribly clean edges...but who cares. Dents.
The key is to make sure that there aren't any gaps left between the paint and the surface because paint will shoot down them and make a giant mess. I used three strips of tape, but this really wasn't enough. There's some very minor overspray, and I'll be using more masking for other dents.
Be sure to run a fingernail over all of the mask edges and make sure everything is pressed down pretty well. I generally leave the edges of the tape up just a bit so it doesn't tear a lot when removed.
Once everything has been properly masked, tackcloth it again. You've gotten dust and oil all over the place when you masked everything, so you need to tack it again. I fucking hate tackcloth.
Then, time to actually bust out the paint! I'm using Rustoleum brand dark grey primer, because it's the closest match for the Toyota green that I could find. I didn't look very hard, though.
As always, start painting off the surface blah blah blah. I'm going to assume you know how to use spray paint.
I used four coats, total. This seems to be enough.
Be sure to remove the masking tape before the paint dries completely. It will tend to chip if it's really dry. You can see some very tiny bits of masking tape stuck in the paint above—these will fall off in a few days when the car starts molting. The ragged edges will similarly clean themselves up.
And that's about it! I've been working on this for about 6 hours so far and have only finished two dents, out of a total of around 20 or so. Everything is sanded, but masking and painting takes a ton of time. I don't expect to be finished for another few days.
And then, my car will be even uglier than before. But at least it won't rust itself from the inside out! Wooo!
1 Note that Mac's 300ZX is still parked in the garage. This makes 157 days, which isn't notable except that it has received no attention other than topping off the clutch fluid. Really—there's still an empty Pepsi bottle sitting in the back end from the day of the hailstorm.
2 EXTREME SANDING!!!
3 This doesn't seem unusual, but I don't want to make some asinine blanket statement like, "people can't feel a paint ridge when it's wet."
4 Also called cheesecloth.
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