I just purchased some touch up paint for my bumper and body (truck, I'm talking about . My question is how to properly apply paint to scratches and scrapes. Reason for me asking is because my brother in law recently touched up his truck, and it looked horrible!! It looked like he applied it too thick or something...you could actually see mounds of paint where he applied it. Any tips and advice would be helpful. Obviously the truck should be thoroughly cleaned prior to doing this, but what about wax? Thanks.

 

Well first off try to get paint in a spray form custom mixed if you can. I never had luck with those little touch up paints from the store matching the factory color. Like say on the Ford red, the touch up paint would always be way to bright. I had my paint custom mixed to my paint code and shipped to me in a spray can from http://automotivetouchup.com/.

To get a perfectly even transition from new paint to old you will have to wet sand - possibly between coats if you're filling a real deep area like I was. Use no more coarse then 800 grit to prep a bad area before painting and then 1200+ grit for final smoothing. I was prepping an area where the clear and base paint was removed all the way down to the primer. Give a coat at least 45 minutes to dry before wet sanding. Thin even coats is the key. If you have to fill a deep area like I did, plan on multiple coats with each being wet sanded before the next coat to fill in the area and get it to be perfectly even and smooth with the factory paint.

After painting is completed and wet sanding the final paint/area smooth with say, 1200+ grit the paint will look dull and chalky. At this point it will look like you have made a major mistake trying to do it yourself since there will be no gloss what-so-ever and the paint will look matte on the sanded areas. But it will now feel perfectly smooth and perfectly level from factory paint over the new paint.

Now all that has to be done is polish the paint to bring back the sanded areas to a high gloss. This is easily done by hand with a microfiber rag and some Meguiar's ScratchX. NO FANCY MACHINING REQUIRED! Just a microfiber and ScratchX by hand is all that's needed after wet sanding.

Here's a pic of my VERY first attempt at re-painting:



The area circled I took off the paint right down to the primer with my high powered 14hp 3700psi gas powered pressure washer trying to get a stubborn bug splat off where I was too close at full power - live and learn.

Well after polishing the paint I waxed (yes I waxed the paint the same day it was painted and never had a problem) and nobody could tell what area on my front bumper I painted. It looked factory (actually it was better - no orange peel, hehe.)

Hey I can't even buff out swirls and spider webs and if I can re-paint an area and make it look factory, anyone can.

This spring I'm going to be touching up some scuffs under the bumper and a few nicks on my red one, but this time I'm going to document the entire process with pictures so it will be easier to follow.

 

Nice post emig5m. That's the same procedure that I utilize but typically stick with no lower than 1000 grit. Final sand is typically 2500 for me.

 

The procedure sounds good, but if you sanded the area around the scratch, ding, etc., and repainted it, wouldn't you have a large area (lets say 2"X2") that didn't have clearcoat? I would think that the lack of clear would make it noticeable. I'm just asking out of curiosity because everything else sounds good.

 

The place I ordered the paint from says that their base paint requires clear spray over top to make it glossy. You can order a can of clear along with your custom mixed paint, however, after polishing and waxing it looked so good I didn't bother with the clear since I wanted to leave well enough alone, lol. I asked many people to see if they could tell where I re-painted my bumper and not one person could point out the area I painted, lol. I did ScratchX the entire bumper after bringing back the painted area to life to help make sure everything was blended in and matching.

Ya where I pressure washed the paint off, the edges where peeled and rippled so I needed something a little coarser to start out with to cut down the rippled edges and give me a nice clean and smooth edge to work with. I'd have to dig out my packs of sand paper to see what I used for the final sanding. I think my local auto parts store didn't have over 1600 grit in stock so I think that's what I might of used for final sanding.

I also lightly drizzled the water hose over the area while I was sanding. I really wish I would photo document all my first time experiments. Thing is I didn't think I had a hope in hell to pull it off and thought I'd wind up at a auto body shop in the end anyway but out of desperation to save some money and not have any down time for my truck I tried it myself and glad I did.

When I do my red truck this spring, I promise I will take pictures of every step. Now if only I could figure out how to use a PC and polish spider webs/swirls/marring out of paint like almost everyone else on this forum seems to be able to, I'll be golden, lol.