You
You
Over the course of driving your vehicle
You're going to end up with a few paint chips from rocks or road debris sort of like what's on the front of this car
And maybe a dent or two from a minor accident
Or even some rust like down here from driving your vehicle through the winter or near the ocean
In any case fixing up the body of your vehicle, so it looks nice again can be done right at home
Hi, I'm Scott Cusey and welcome to car care seminar
And this tape will cover several different what I call minor body repairs
Although the same principles can be applied to fix and repair major body damage, too
And we'll be working with Randy Bailey from color works auto body
You'll take a step-by-step through each repair and explain each specialty tool that we're using
Now the repairs demonstrated on this tape include minor abrasion or surface scratch removal
rock chip repair or touch-up
Auto repair an area of peeling paint
Restoring an area that is rusted out
Pulling out a dent and also a section totally dedicated to final paint finishing techniques
To help blend the surface of the new paint into the surface of the old paint
Right now let's go meet Randy and get started with our first repair
In this first chapter will detail removing minor surface abrasion and scratches
Randy, what are you going to show us here first? Well, we want to try to take out some minor abrasions
Abrasions that are on the surface of the paint
Abrasions that are caused by maybe too many times through the car wash with some coarse brushes
Or possibly maybe a tree branch has fallen on the car just minor abrasions
Okay, so this is a type of abrasion that I wouldn't need to paint to actually fix
No, you wouldn't need to paint to actually fix
This wouldn't be something that anybody could do with very few products. Why don't you show us what we need?
Well, what we need to begin with is just basically some coarse rubbing compound and some fine rubbing compound and a couple of soft rigs
We're going to start out with some coarse compound
Okay by coarse and fine compounds, what do you really mean?
Well coarse compound, I guess the only way to describe it is that it's a very fine compound
Well, coarse compound, I guess the only way to describe it is is is feel it
Okay, can you feel the grid in there? Yeah, I can feel a little substance in there. Yeah. Okay. What we want to do is start out
just
Putting our coarse compound on
Okay, is there any particular motion I should use when I'm putting this on?
I don't know that it really makes any difference
I think the idea is to is to get the abrasion out no matter what it takes
It is going to take a little bit of elbow grease doing it by hand. Okay
Are there any conditions that are ideal for doing a job like this?
Well, you definitely don't want to be under direct sunlight
And you don't want to have you don't want to be doing this on a day when it's real windy when you have a lot of
dirt or dust in the air
Okay. So how about the surface? I probably want to start with a clean vehicle too. Absolutely. Absolutely
Clean a vehicle thoroughly
Uh with a good detergent. Well, that's looking pretty good already. Okay. I'm going to take off a little bit of the residue right now
I'm just going to flip the rag over here
Okay off a little bit of the residue
Well
What do you think that looks like?
Why she's looking pretty good looking pretty good already
Okay. Now we've got the major abrasions rubbed out with the coarse compound. What's next?
Well, we want to go to the fine compound now, okay
We're going to change rags
Okay, put that on a different rag than you started with clean rag, okay
Now how do I tell the difference? Well feel this compared to what the original
Compound was that we started with I feel little or no grit at all in this stuff here. This is more of a polishing compound
Okay, we're going to apply this the same way as we did the other compound
Okay
Now as far as surface area
Should I go over a little bit farther what I did with the first stuff? Yeah, and that's what we're doing here
We're overlapping a little bit
Okay, kind of fill in and take out those scratches from the coarse compound
Absolutely. That's exactly what we're trying to do. Just take out the scratches from the other compound
Now should I wait for this to dry before I wipe it off or anything like that?
No on the compounds. Actually, it's better to leave them leave them a little bit moist and not let them dry
Okay
Now i'm going to take off a little bit of the residue like we did the first time around
Okay
Flip the rag over
And scott why don't you follow up with uh with a brand new clean rag, okay. Yeah, and give it a little polish
This will bring the gloss level back to its original condition. That does really look nice
I can feel the smoothness already
Okay. Now once i've gotten that done and I can feel the smoothness and everything
Is that it? Is that all I have to do to the finish?
Well, you've taken all the protection off of the finish by using abrasives
Okay, you're going to want to put some protection back on so now you can go back and and re-wax or put some more protection back on
Okay
Okay, there we go. I got her all waxed up and the finish is all protected shines really nice
too
In this chapter, we'll show you how to repair or repaint rock chips
Right now we're back visiting with randy bailey from the color works
He's going to show us how to cover up some of them unsightly rock chips you end up with on your vehicle
Randy, where do we start?
Well scott one easy way of doing this is to purchase one of these touch-up bottles with a little brush inside
With the correct paint to match the car. All right
The one thing we want to do is make sure that you shake the bottle up real good before we start too, right?
Correct. We also want to make sure that our area is very clean
I'm going to use a little bit of wax and grease remover to come in here and clean off any wax or grease or tar that might be present
Okay, but if we didn't have wax and grease remover
We also could use some hot soapy water and rinse it off thoroughly too, correct?
Correct and then you'd also want to make sure that's very clean
Correct and then you'd also want to make sure that's very dry before you applied the paint
Okay, i'm also going to use a little piece of cardboard here. I'm going to take my brush
Kind of dab some of the paint on here first
Reason for this is so I don't get a big glob of paint
to start out with
Okay, sort of act as a test panel to show us if the color is right too, won't it?
Yeah, and it looks like we got a real good color match here
Here
Just dab a little on there and
This is also one good way to protect the chip from rusting in the future
Okay, which could possibly end up with a major rust out. That's correct
Great
Looks good randy. Thanks for the night tip. Well, thank you
In chapter three, we'll show you how to repair an area of peeling paint
Hi randy, hi scott. What are you going to show us here today? Well today we're going to do some refinishing
We've got an ear deflector here on this station wagon that the paint is kind of flaked off
Okay, I can see it's up here on the top and the bottom side also
Mm-hmm. All right. Where do we get started?
Well, the first thing that we want to do is wash the car thoroughly with hot water and salt
And then we're going to go back over it with some wax and grease remover
Okay, so that's not actually just water in that bottle you're using no
This is an automotive body shop wax and grease remover
And this is taking off any of the residual wax or tar
Or grease that might be on this that the water won't take off
Is that special tar you're using to do that with these are just paper towels and you can
You can use just a regular shop rag as long as it isn't abrasive. Okay, most importantly probably that it's also clean
Has to be clean. Absolutely. All right, then what our next step now is to sand the panel
But before we send it, would you hand over some three-quarter inch tape? Sure
What I want to do is take a little bit of masking tape here and just go around the areas that we're not going to sand to
protect them so that
Sandpaper doesn't overlap these areas and we end up having to paint any more
Okay, so that's not actually our final taping. This is just to protect it
This is something that that we're going to use just to protect and we'll be doing this throughout our auto body
repairs, okay
I want to take some sandpaper and we've got some 320 grit
Sandpaper and sheets and I want to take this paper and i'm going to fold it in half and tear it into half sheets
Okay, I prefer to use half sheets
I'm going to take a sponge pad
Inserted inside of the sandpaper. Okay. What's the reason for the sponge pad then?
Well, I don't want to leave sanding marks from my fingers in the panel
The pad will give us a a padding so that we won't do that. Okay. What's special about that paper you're using
Well, this is a 320 grit open sandpaper recommended to be used while it's dry
But we can also use a 320 grit wet or dry sandpaper
If you prefer and we can use this either wet or dry doesn't make any difference. Okay
So now we're going to go into sanding this trying to feather this paint out
I'm going to start sanding right here. Okay. Is there any special notes we want to remember when we're sanding?
Well, you want to sand back and forth in a straight line
You don't want to go in circles and what we want to try to do is feather this paint out here where it's broken
Okay, what do you mean by feather out?
Well, we want to try to get rid of the rough edge and make it a gradual transition into the paint
Oh, okay. So our primer and stuff like that will probably take up a little bit of that, too
Yes, absolutely
And what we're going to do is sand for a little bit here work our way down to the end of the air deflector
And i'm going to flip the sandpaper over
Use the other side of it
And you can see now that we're starting to to get this broken paint feathered out feathered out to a point where
I can run my hand over it and not feel an edge anymore
Well, this should pretty well do it for sanding. Okay, it's got a feel for this edge here
Oh, yeah, I can see where the paint was originally there
Originally chipping off and it's nice and smooth now. It feels pretty smooth. It should be pretty close to ready for primer now
Okay, why don't you step back just a minute? We're going to blow some of this dust off of here
All right
Now you can do this at home with a veneer
Cleaner or just wipe it off with the towel
Okay
And now what we'd like to do is wax and grease remove it again
Okay with the same stuff that we used earlier same exact stuff that we used earlier
Okay, so we're going to do this with a vacuum cleaner
Okay with the same stuff that we used earlier same exact stuff that we used earlier. All right. Well, let's go ahead and do that
And what this is doing is just removing the residue from the sand sanding dust
And now we're ready to mask and prime
Now we're just finishing up removing the masking tape that we had on here from sanding
One thing you want to make sure you do when you're removing it
Just take your time be nice and slow and gentle with it so you don't pull any extra paint off and have to paint that surface
Get the last one off there
Okay, i'll hand you the tape. Thank you scott and uh, you can go ahead and start masking off for priming now
Okay, you're getting it all taped off here with paper and everything like that
The tape that you're using is there anything special about the tape?
Well, this is a special auto body type tape that we use
And uh, so is the paper this paper is
Specifically designed for the auto body shop, but you can use any type of paper that you would like to use newspaper works
Fine, maybe double it up. You just want to use a paper that the solvents from the paint won't penetrate through
Okay
You're going to get another piece here of this other special paper
Now how far should we probably go out and cover an area to keep it from getting overspray on it?
We want to go about 18 inches out so that the overspray doesn't stick to the rest of the car
And of course our machine here applies the tape to the paper automatically
Okay, now if we were outside we would most likely want to probably
Tape or tape off even a larger area wouldn't we definitely if you got any kind of wind blowing around
Probably it wouldn't recommend even doing it if you have too much wind
I try to do it in as much of a calm area as you possibly can
One
Well now that we're all done taping i'm going to tack this off, okay, what do you mean by tack it off?
Well what i've got here is what they call a tack cloth and it's a cloth with a sticky substance on it used to take
Off any dust that's left over. Okay another measure to ensure we got a clean surface for priming and painting. Yes
Okay
And now we're going to prime. All right
Shake the can how long are you supposed to shake a can like that?
Well the directions say that you should shake it a minute after the steel ball starts to rattle
But because primer surfacer is heavy product it wouldn't hurt to shake it for a couple minutes or maybe even three minutes
Okay, is there anything special about the primer that we're going to use here?
This is a primer surfacer a sandable primer
Okay, which is important for in between coats so we can sand it and make the surface good and smooth
And we're using it as a filler. Okay. All right
Now you told me also about a test panel. I've got one here
To show us how we're supposed to use this and why it's used
we want to shoot out a test panel so that
We can assure ourselves that the nozzle is working properly. Okay, and now we have the right product
All right, and it looks good looks like it's working well. All right
The next thing that I want to make sure that everybody knows is when priming or painting any surfaces
You want to make sure you use one of these
It's a dust respirator. It keeps the fumes and dust and stuff from painting out of your lungs and out of your nose
What Randy will be using is actually a professional one that they use in the body shop
Okay, let's go ahead and start priming
Now whenever using spray primer
Make sure you're holding the can about 12 to 16 inches away from the surface being primed
And don't cover with a continuous spray or release the button every once in a while and overlap your strokes
Remember
Light coats are better than heavy coats
Once your first coat of primer has set up tacky but appears dry apply the second coat
Several thin coats are best to help fill any small sanding scratches or imperfections
And to build up the thickness of the primer for final sanding
Again when the second coat is tacky but appears dry apply the third and final coat of primer
Additional coats may be needed but most often three coats will be sufficient
Okay, we've got the surface all primed now Randy's beginning to sand the surface
Is there anything special that we should remember about sanding at this point in time?
Well, we're using the same procedure as we did before
When we were prepping the panel basically sand back and forth in a straight even pattern
All right. I noticed you're using the sponge method as earlier
Yeah, we're using that again so that we can we don't leave any finger marks or we're digging grooves into the primer with our fingers
So we're using the pad in between to uh to help absorb that
Okay, how about the grit of our sandpaper? What grit are we using now?
320 grit again same thing as we started out with works very well for uh,
Painting over okay now I could do this wet or dry either way. It doesn't matter
Uh, of course wet you want to use the wet or dry paper, right?
And dry it seems to work a little bit better with the open coat paper
But you can also do that with uh, the wet or dry paper also using a dry
Okay, it looks like we're getting there. Yeah, we're just about done here. This looks pretty good
Okay, feels pretty good to me. How about you scott? Yeah, it's nice and smooth
Now, how come it is that we're always feeling the paint instead of just looking at our surface and saying yeah, it looks good. Well
we want to
In body work feel everything that you do because if you can feel an imperfection
You'll probably be able to see it through the paint. Okay, so you're sometimes basically saying
An imperfection I can feel I can feel
I might not be able to see absolutely. Okay, why don't you step back just a minute and i'll blow this off. All right
Okay, okay now I want to tack it again, okay, and then we're ready for paint here's the tack cloth
And again, we're just taking off the residual sand
And then we're going to take off the residual sand
And then we're going to take off the residual sand
And then we're going to take off the residual sand
Primer sand dust dust. Okay
Now we're ready for paint
Okay, we've got our surface all prepared and it's ready to paint. Well before we start painting
Make sure you spray a test panel like we did here
There's a couple of reasons for that for one
You can check to make sure that your paint is mixed up well and that it comes out of the nozzle. All right
And secondly, you can actually match it up to the side of your vehicle to make sure you've got the right paint to match the vehicle
Okay, I think we're about ready to go right? Yep. All right. I'm going to put my mask on and we'll start painting
Now while you're painting make sure you hold the can about six to ten inches from the surface
Press the spray button all the way down and paint in several steady even strokes
To avoid runs and sags don't apply heavy coats spray light
But wet coats and allow the paint to become tacky in between coats
Just as we demonstrated during priming you'll get the best results by applying several thin coats of paint
Here we're going to apply a thin coat of paint
We're going to apply several thin coats of paint here. We're applying the second coat
After the second coat is tacky yet. Not totally dry. We'll apply the third coat
Remember to use smooth even strokes when painting
In our case, we chose to apply a fourth coat of paint as our final coat
Again, the number of coats of paint will vary with your specific repair
Once the area is painted it's been allowed to dry for a couple of hours
You can remove the masking tape and paper as we've done here already
But make sure to be careful when you're removing it just in case the paint is still a little tacky
Then once the paint has been allowed to dry for about one day
You can wash it with a mild soap such as a car wash soap
Once the paint is set up for at least a couple of days
You can use a rubbing compound on the painted surface and the surrounding surfaces to smooth out any texture in the paint
And to help blend the new paint into the old
Then follow the rubbing compound with a glazing or polishing compound to remove the swirl marks
Lastly you want to seal a paint with a good coat of wax and most waxes do a pretty good job
It's usually up to your personal preference when deciding which wax to use
But make sure to wait at least 30 days from the original day you painted the surface before waxing it
Before waxing it in chapter four we'll show you how to repair a minor rust out area
Today we're here at the color works auto body shop where randy's going to show us again how to fix up the body of our car
But the first message I want to point out is whenever doing power grinding or power sanding
Make sure you wear to pay your safety goggles like this and a protective dust respirator like this one here
Randy what are you going to show us here first?
Well today scott we want to repair this little bit of rust that's at the bottom of this door
And I suspect that after we grind this we're going to have a small hole here
Okay, so we're going to have to fill the hole up. Where do we get started?
Well the first thing I want to do is tape off the outlining area with some masking tape to protect it from the grinder
Okay, what did you do to the surface here to repair it before we started our repair?
Well first we washed it thoroughly with hot water and soap and then I went back over it with some wax and grease remover to get rid of the excess tar and wax
Okay
I'm going to use an air grinder to grind this away but at home you could use an electric drill with a grinding disc attached to it
Okay well how coarse is the grinding disc that you have on your sander there?
Well scott this is a 24 grit disc
Okay why don't we put our masks on and get started
Okay it looks like you got it all ground out there
Yeah that looks pretty good
Okay I noticed little black spots here in the middle. What are those black spots here?
Those little spots are actually where it's rusted through and what I want to do now is take a pick hammer and pick those down and kind of sink them a little bit
Okay what's the purpose of the pick hammer then?
Well the pick hammer is going to sink it a little bit so that when we put the filler on the filler has something to grab onto
Okay
You can see as I'm picking I'm actually going right through the metal in some areas
Now you can see scott that we got some pretty good holes here that we're going to have to fill up with our filler
I'm feeling this again now to feel that I've got this sunken in a little bit
Okay I think I have this picked out pretty good now
I'm going to run my hand over this just very slowly because we have some sharp edges here and I don't want to cut myself on it
I've got it indented enough that the filler should take hold pretty good and the rest of it feels pretty even now
Okay let's open up the door there and we'll take a look at how severe the rust damage is
Put my hand behind here
Look you can see your finger through there
Sure can, sure can
It's hard to believe that such a small rust hole or small rust spot ends up being such a large hole
Yeah it doesn't take very much to expand it out and we want to make sure that we get it all so that we can get it all covered and won't come back
Okay what are we going to do next here?
Now we're ready for filler
Okay
First step is to mix up the body filler
We chose to use a lightweight body filler like the one I'm holding
I've already mixed this stuff up in the can like so and we put a small amount of it on Randy's mixing board
Randy why don't you tell us a little bit about mixing it
Well Scott what I want to do now is supply about a one inch ribbon of cream hardener to approximately a golf ball sized portion of body filler
Okay then you're going to go into mixing her up here
I want to take and knead this together with my spreader
I don't want to stir it because I don't want to create any air bubbles in it
Knead it together until I get a uniform color
Okay
And we're starting to get a pretty uniform color now
And now we're ready to apply and we have about five minutes maybe before this sets up
Now we're ready to apply the filler
Okay
I'm going to use this little spreader that came with the filler kit
And I'm going to apply it like so even strokes
I notice that you're building a little bit extra up on there it looks like
Yeah it will shrink back a little bit so you want to put a little bit more on
And we may even have to come back with a second coat
Of course the smoother that you apply it the easier it's going to be to sand
Now if we were doing a larger rust out repair we might choose a rust repair body filler like this one here which is fiberglass reinforced
At the same time we'd most likely use a piece of backup screen like I'm holding here to hold the filler in place while it's drying
The other thing I want to mention is this type of repair is most likely only a temporary patch
The only way to make it a permanent repair would be to cut out the rust spot, weld in new metal or to replace the panel itself
Okay now we've let our body filler set up for about 10 minutes here
Randy how do we actually tell when the body filler is ready to sand?
What we want to do is scratch it and if you can see the white underneath there when you scratch it it's ready to sand
Okay
What grade of sandpaper are you using right now?
This is 40 grit
That's basically to take out the large imperfections on the surface
Now what we're trying to do is level it off now
I'm going to stop for a minute here and just feel this
It's starting to level off pretty good but we're not quite there yet
Now what I want to do Scott is I want to feather this edge out here a little bit you can feel that there's kind of a ridge there
Yeah okay
You're going to smooth that out so it blends in a little bit easier on our next steps
I'm going to do this with a DA sander or dual orbital sander just to speed things up a little bit
But at home you can do this with your 40 grit sanding block
Okay let's put our masks on and get started
Okay what we've done here is we finished feather edging the area out
And then we blew the dust off from putting the body filler on from sanding
And then we taped off the area like so to protect the other surfaces
And then we wiped the area that we're going to prime and paint with a wax and grease remover
Where do we go from here Randy?
Well now Scott we're ready for priming
The first thing we want to do is spray out a little test panel
Okay
We want to make sure that our can is working properly and our nozzle isn't plugged
And it looks pretty good to me
We're going to give this two coats
We're going to put one coat on and we want it to flash off
And now you're mostly just priming the area that we fixed
Yes, now we'll let that flash off a little bit
What I mean by flashing off, we'll let some of the solvents come out of it
Until it gets to a dull look again and then we'll give it another coat
So basically when it dries then we'll give her another coat almost
Right, well Scott now you can see that the primer has started to dull out a little bit
Now we're ready for our second coat
We'll let that dry again now until it becomes dull
Now we're ready to apply some glazing putty
But first let's explain a little bit about what glazing putty really is
All it's for is to go over these fine scratches that we've left with the 40 grit sandpaper in the body filler
And fill those scratches in
We don't want to apply our glazing putty any more than about an eighth of an inch thick
Just to fill in the minor scratches
All right, let's go ahead
Now there's no mixing required or anything like that with the glazing putty
No, this just comes right out of the tube like this
Okay
We're using a rubber squeegee to apply this with
And again you want to try to get it on as smooth as possible
The smoother you put it on the less sanding you'll have to do later
We're probably only like maybe a sixteenth of an inch thick here
The first thing to remember whenever doing your own body repairs is to take your time and don't rush it
You want to make sure that all your materials have dried before you go on to the next step
In our case we decided to leave our glazing putty dry overnight to make sure it was ready to sand
Why don't we go ahead and start Randy
What grit sandpaper are you using there?
Well Scott, we're going to use a 120 grit sandpaper with a hard rubber block
First I'm going to put my mask on
Okay
Is there anything special we should remember when block sanding?
Well you want to go in a straight line fashion
And continue to feel your bodywork like we talked about before
To make sure that everything is leveled out
Okay
Okay I think we're doing pretty good now
I'm going to feel it just to make sure that we're level
And it feels pretty good, how about you Scott?
Yeah, so really all the glazing putty is used for now is to fill in the sanding scratches
Just the sanding scratches, you don't want to use it as a filler
And I think I'm going to blow this off now and then we'll run over it with a tack rag
Alright
Again, that could be done at home with like a vacuum cleaner or something like that too
If they didn't have air pressure
Yeah, okay
And now we're ready for primer
One thing you want to make sure you do whenever you're using paint or primer
Is to shake your up good for a couple of minutes before you start
Generally once the ball rattles, about a minute or so it'll be fine
I think I got this one good enough Randy
Okay Scott, let's spray a little test panel first just to make sure that everything is working properly
Okay
That looks pretty good to me
Put your coat on and then we'll let it flash off and we'll do another coat
Alright
Whenever priming, make sure to use smooth even strokes
Periodically depressing the spray nozzle
Apply only thin coats each time
Once each coat of primer has set up tacky but appears dry
Apply additional coats
Several thin coats are best to help fill any small sanding scratches or imperfections
Well Scott, our primer looks pretty good
Looks like it's set up pretty good
Now we're going to sand it with some 320 grit paper
Okay, what do you have inside the paper there?
Well I'm using a sponge inside of here
I'm using this as a pad so that we don't get any finger marks as we're sanding
We want to have some kind of a pad in between our work and our hand as we're sanding
Okay, let's get started
Now we're done sanding now
Feels pretty good
We've got a nice edge feathered out here
I'm going to just finish tacking it off and we're ready for bead
Sounds good
Okay, do you have any extra tips that we can remember to use before painting?
Well make sure, Scott, that you shake the can vigorously
And when the ball breaks loose that you shake for at least two or three minutes after that
And always shoot a test panel out before to make sure that the can's working properly
Okay, let's go ahead
Lastly, make sure you're wearing your dust mask whenever it comes around to painting
It looks like our can's working pretty good
Just as we demonstrated during priming, you'll obtain the best results by applying several thin coats of paint
Here, we're applying the second coat
Make sure when you're painting, spray several light coats
Hold the can about 68 inches from the area that you're painting
Once each coat has dried, lightly wipe off the area with a tack cloth
This will remove any dust or dirt particles between coats
In our case, we chose to apply a fourth coat of paint as our final coat
Again, the number of coats of paint will vary with your specific repair
But most commonly, four coats will cover the area that you are repairing
Once the area painted has been allowed to dry for a couple of hours
You can remove the masking tape and paper as we've already done here
But be careful when you're removing it because the paint might still be tacky
Then, once the paint has been allowed to dry for about one day
You can wash it with a mild soap such as a car wash soap
Once the paint is set up for at least a couple of days
You can use a rubbing compound on the painted surface and the surrounding surfaces to smooth out any texture in the paint
And to help blend the new paint into the old
Then follow the rubbing compound with a glazing or polishing compound to remove the swirl marks
Lastly, you'll want to seal the paint with a good coat of wax
And most waxes do a pretty good job
It's usually up to your personal preference when deciding which wax to use
But make sure to wait at least 30 days from the original day you painted the surface before waxing it
In Chapter 5, we'll demonstrate how to repair a door dent
Randy, what do you have to show us here today?
Well, Scott, looks like we got a pretty good dent in this panel here
Probably caused from a parking lot
Somebody opening their door
And then you end up with a dent like that
I notice the crease of the dent goes across this body line
How's that going to affect our repair?
Well, this is going to make it a little more difficult, but we will have to restore this body line through here
Okay, now we've already washed off the vehicle
You've got another additional step you like to perform
I'd like to go back and put some wax and grease remover on here to remove any excess wax, grease, or tar
Okay, if you're doing your repair at home, just make sure you wash it off real good with hot, soapy water
If you don't have a wax and grease remover like we're using here
All right, where do we go next?
I would like to tape off this molding to protect it from the grinder
Okay, if there's any molding or any pinstriping as such up here that is near the area that you're going to be grinding or sanding off
Make sure you put a couple of layers of masking tape over it to protect it
We're basically ready to start grinding
Unless you've got a power air grinder there that you're going to use
How coarse is the disc you're using on that grinder?
I think we'll start out with a 24-grit disc
Okay, that's basically to remove the outer layers of paint and get it right down to the bare metal, actually, correct?
Correct, and we want to follow this with going around the entire surface
That's basically to remove the outer layers of paint and get it right down to the bare metal, actually, correct?
Correct, and we want to follow this with going around the area a little bit further than just what the damaged area is
Okay, if you don't have a power grinder at home, you can do the same area by hand
We're going to obviously use the grinder to speed up our repair a little bit
The other thing I want to mention is if you're using any power tool or grinding or sanding
You can use a glass respirator like this here
And also, whenever you're using power tools, make sure you wear safety glasses
Why don't we get started here, Randy?
One thing I want to add is that with the grinder we're going to produce a lot of heat
And the heat will distort the metal
So I want to stop and make sure that we aren't getting the panel too hot
Well, it looks like we've got it now
And you can see that I've gone a little bit past the damaged area here
Okay, why is that, Randy?
I want to remove all the paint so that the primers and the fillers that we use are not going to be over the top of the paint
They don't adhere very well to the old paint
Okay, why don't we clean this up a little bit?
I'm going to take an air blower here and blow some of the dust away
Now, if you're at home and you don't have an air compressor and an air blower like what we used here
You can use an old vacuum cleaner or a shop vac to kind of clean your area off
Well, now we're ready to rough this downtown
And there's a couple ways that we could do this
One way is to spend some time to remove this inner door panel
And see if we can have access to it from the back side
Taking a hammer and actually working this metal flat from the back side
Now, you mentioned that there's a safety brace or something built in this door
So you already know that we can't get at this dent from the back side
How are we going to approach it then?
Well, we're going to use a different method here because of its nature as a blind dent
And we're going to use a dent puller on this
Okay, I happen to have one down here
It's a consumer model that you can buy in the stores to use
Why don't you tell us a little bit about how this works?
Well, this dent puller utilizes a sheet metal screw
Which has to have a hole drilled into the panel and insert the sheet metal screw into the hole
And then using the hammer part of the dent puller to work the dent out
Okay, so I turn it into the hole and then slide the hammer like this to start pulling the metal back out
Correct, and as you're doing that you would like to use what I would call body hammer here
To hammer on that metal around to work it flat
Okay, now drilling a hole in the metal, does that affect our repair?
I personally don't like to drill holes in the metal if I don't have to
If you have to drill a hole, I recommend that you weld it shut again
Okay, or use maybe a fiberglass filler?
Correct, because the reason is when you put your primer fillers over an open hole like that
It has an opportunity for moisture to come in through the inside of that hole
And possibly leave an impression in your final paint later on
Okay, now you've got a method that's normally used by professionals
Why don't you tell us about that?
What we're going to use today is what I call a stud gun
And we're actually going to weld a small stud to this panel
And then utilize a dent puller very similar to the one that you just had here
And pull on that stud, consequently not having to drill a hole into the panel
Okay, why don't we put them in here?
And I'm going to add a stud right down here in this body line
Right at the crease in the body line, see if we can't restore that body line
Okay, so you've got the studs welded on here, Randy
Now what do we do?
Now we're ready to take our dent puller and grab onto those studs and pull them out
Okay, see that one looks pretty much similar to the one that I have right here
Very much so, the only difference is just the end is adapted to pull onto the studs
Rather than have the sheet metal screw for the holes
As I'm pulling this out, I'm going to take the body hammer and kind of work this metal around the outside
You can definitely see where you're pulling that dent out already
Now it looks like this is coming out pretty good, it's pretty flat now
Yeah, there's barely any dent left up here at all
Let's move down to this one right in the body line here, see if we can't work that out a little bit
I notice you don't even have to slam it very hard really
No, it doesn't take very much at all and you want to be careful so you don't go too far
Sure
You're just hammering some of the excess back in a little bit then?
Correct, you remember when we started we were out actually a little bit down in the bottom here
And now that we're pulling this body line back into place we can hammer this excess metal back down again
Actually right now it feels pretty good, I think we're ready for some filler
Okay, how do we remove these here?
I'm just going to take a side cutters and cut these studs off
Then I'm going to take our grinder again with our 24 grit disc
And just grind the end of the stud off
Again I want to be careful so I don't get the panel too hot to distort it
Okay Randy, I've got the body filler here and I've mixed it up pretty good
In the body shop I have a plastic piece here that we use for mixing our plastic filler on
If I didn't have a piece of plastic like you got there for mixing it I could just use a piece of cardboard or something like that, couldn't I?
Correct
I've got the hardener here and I'm going to knead this tube a little bit to mix it up
Then I want to spread out about a one inch ribbon, about a golf ball size of filler
Then I'm going to take my spreader and knead this together until I get a uniform color
And now we're ready to apply this to the panel
I notice you're spreading that on fairly thin too, is there any specific thickness that we're not supposed to exceed?
Well you should try to rough your metal out so that you don't have to apply more than about a sixteenth of an inch of filler
I'm going to use a couple of different strokes here to work this body line back in so that we can get a nice sharp edge here
Of course notice Randy's using some wide strokes here because the smoother that you put the filler on the less work that you're going to have to do with the sandpaper to get it to your final finish
In about ten minutes we should be able to come back and sand this down
Well I think we're about ready to sand now but just to make sure that we are, I'm going to take and scratch this a little bit with the sandpaper
If we can see white underneath there then our plastic filler is cured enough to start
Okay, now remember whenever we're sanding make sure you wear your protective dust mask
Is there any particular direction that we want to sand Randy?
Yes, we want to be in a back and forth straight line motion
Well it's starting to look pretty good now
Okay, what grit of sandpaper did you use for that first sanding bit?
Right now we're using 40 grit sandpaper
Okay
Now that we have this sanded out I'm just going to clean it off with the blower a little bit here
Okay, now if you're doing that at home again you can use a vacuum cleaner to clean off the excess dust
What do you have there Randy?
This is a spot putty just like we applied it the last time we did this
Okay
Only this is a catalyzed spot putty and we catalyzed it this time so that we could speed the process up a little bit
Now if they're doing that at home they can buy the spot putty already mixed and catalyzed right in the tube, right?
Correct
It's starting to look pretty good now
Okay, what grit of sandpaper were you using on the spot putty then?
80 grit sandpaper here
And now I'd like to follow this up with some 80 grit sandpaper around this outside area here and feather this in for a primer surfacer
But I'm going to use the dual orbital sander for this to speed the process up a little bit
Okay, but if you were at home you could do this feathering around this outside edges like he's going to do just with a block and an 80 grit sandpaper of your own
Okay
Now I'll blow some of the dust off of here
Okay, we removed our temporary masking tape down here
Then we dusted the entire area off now we're ready for masking to get it ready for primer
Randy's simply masking it off with masking tape going along this molding here
One thing about masking you want to take your time because your final results is only going to be as good as the job that you do masking it off
Okay, we'll just finish off here with our masking
Okay, now he's using a special paper that has masking tape already attached to it from a dispenser
But if you're doing this at home you can certainly use masking tape in old newspapers works just fine
Okay, what's our next step Randy?
Well Scott now we're ready to prime but first I'm going to take the tack rag and just wipe off a little bit of the dust here that's settled
Okay
And we've already shook up our can of primer I'd like to do a little bit of a test panel first
Okay, why would you do a test panel?
Just to make sure that our spray pattern is correct and our nozzle is unplugged
Okay, now before we begin priming again we're going to make sure we have our respirator masks on and safety glasses
Okay, now we're going to let this flash off and we'll put a second coat on
Okay, what do you mean by flash off Randy?
We want to wait until the solvents come out you can actually see it as it's drying it's becoming dull
When it becomes all dull then we can apply another coat
All right, now that our primer is dry we're ready for our final sanding
What I've got here is a piece of 320 grit wet or dry sandpaper
I've torn it in half taking this half here and roll it into three positions
I'm going to insert my hard sponge in between this
Okay, what's the reason for putting a hard sponge in when you're going to sand this?
Well believe it or not you can leave fingerprints or finger marks by not having something between your fingers in the sandpaper
as you're sanding on the primer surface
So we want to put something in between and this is kind of a hard composition sponge
Oh, okay
Now what I'm doing here is just finishing this up with a little bit of 400 grit paper
Okay, that'll give us our super fine finish for our paint then won't it?
Yeah, feels pretty good. So I think we'll blow this off and we'll go into a paint. Okay
Okay, Randy, what are you doing here now? Well, I'm doing another wax and grease removing step
Get all the talc from the primer surface or off and clean up any other debris that might be left in the job
Okay, I've got the can of paint all shaken up here. What I've got on the can here is a spray paint can gun handle
It makes painting a little bit easier. You can direct the spray at the same time. It's a little bit easier on your finger
Okay, we all set? Yeah. Here's the paint. We'll shoot out a little bit of a test panel here again
Okay, we're ready. Let's put our mask on and begin painting
It's looking pretty good, Randy. We're just finishing our final coats now and just blending it a little bit into the edges to kind of match with the other paint
Now, due to the transparency of the color that we painted here, we had several additional coats
In Chapter 6, we'll demonstrate final paint finishing procedures
Okay, we've finished our final coats of paint and we've allowed the paint to dry for a couple days before final finishing
Randy, what's our first step here now? Well, Scott, what we'd like to do is take and color sand and rub out this area that we've blended into to make the texture as smooth as the original finish
Okay. Yeah, I noticed a little bit of roughness in our new paints. We're going to match that to the old stuff now
Correct. And I've taken some masking tape again to mask off the moldings in this stripe up here to protect them so that we don't either sand on them or buff on them
Okay. You've got a little sanding block there again, a sponge. Tell us again why you're using that
Well, I'm using a sponge again so that we don't get finger marks as we're sanding
Alright. And what grit of sandpaper will you be using? And we're using a 2000 grit sandpaper
Okay, very, very fine sandpaper, so very minimal scratches as you're sanding
Correct
I noticed you're also wet sanding that
We want to use a lot of water here as we're wet sanding
And what does the water do then?
Cleans out the grit of the paper and also gives us a nice smooth sanding surface
Okay
That's starting to look pretty good
I'm going to take a towel now and wipe this off a little bit
Now what would we do if, say, we sanded just a little bit too much and kind of went through the paint that we already have there?
Well, if that happens, you can just go back and refinish again
I'm going to take and sand out a little bit of dirt and lint that we've got in a couple other spots here too
So if we did get a piece of dust in while we were painting, you can get that back out
Sure, just sand it smooth again. You can see where, as the water dries on here, where you're at
That looks pretty good. It looks like we're ready to use some compound on here now
Well, Scott, now I'm ready to use this compound on here and I'm going to use a relatively coarse compound to begin with
Okay
I'm going to apply it to the panel, but you can also apply it to your buffing pad if you like. It's kind of a personal preference
Again, I want to remind you whenever you're using power tools, make sure you're wearing safety glasses
Okay, Randy, why don't you give us a couple tips to remember when using a buffer maybe here?
Well, you can see that I didn't apply a lot of pressure to the buffer that because we used 2000 grit sandpaper, it'll polish out relatively fast
Also, you've heard some terms about burn through and rub through. You can actually burn the paint if you don't use enough compound on the surface
And the pad becomes too hot and you actually can scar the paint
Rub through is also like in an area on this body line where if you apply too much pressure, you can actually rub the paint right off of there
Okay, so like on a line like this or up on the fender, you've got to be real careful in those areas when buffing
And again, probably you can't use too much polish then I would assume
Well, I guess there is a point to using too much, but you're better off to use too much than not enough
And again, if you do go through the paint or you scar the paint, you still have to start back over at your refinishing steps
Okay, let's go on to the next step then
What I'd like to do now is follow up with a finer compound because you notice that because of this coarse compound, we have some what I call swirl marks from the buffer pad
Okay, while Randy's changing the buffer pad, I'm going to wipe the door off with a damp towel to get this coarse compound cleaned off from the door here
And then quickly, I'll go over it with a dry towel
And we want to make sure we clean it off real good because we don't want the coarse compound mixed in with the fine compound
You set, Randy?
Yeah, I'm going to start out with our fine compound again just applying it right to the door panel
Pretty much the same way as we did the others
Really, it is looking nice. I'm going to wipe it off again here
That pretty much did take all the scratches out there, didn't it? It looks pretty good
Okay, it sure is shiny, but we don't have any protection on it yet, do we?
Yes, we'd like to probably put some protection on here, but because of the manufacturer's recommendations, I'm talking about the paint manufacturers and the people that make waxes
It might be safe to wait possibly 30 days before you apply any wax
Okay, sounds good, Randy. Thanks for the great information
Well, thank you
I hope our tape has helped clear up many of the questions that you might have had about doing your own auto body repairs
Before you attempt the next repair on your vehicle, make sure you check to see if there's a Car Care seminar tape available to help you along
I'm Scott Cusey for Car Care Seminar
Right now, I'd like to thank our sponsors, our auto body expert, Randy Bailey, and also thank you for choosing our tape
I hope I can help you with your next repair
See you then
Thank you for watching