bodywork - general tips

[scarlet_vr6 0]

my C is currently at a bodyshop having it's first ever paint work done in my ownership. However, I have very little experience and knowledge of paint work so was wondering if there any tips or gems of advice that anyone could offer before I collect it in the next few days. It's had the rust around the windscreen aperture treated, and I've only had the A-pillars painted and it blended across the roof, as I hope to have the car resprayed in the next couple of years. Obviously I'll be checking for a good colour match and no orange peel, but is there anything else I should look out for or any tricks to help spot paint defects, please? Presumably it is better to check under the shop lights as well as natural light.

 

Any advice greatly appreciated :)

[VW_OwneR_85 1]

just look across the panels at an angle or as many angles as possible and make sure the car is dry , imperfections will show themselves,

,im only a diy painter so im not 100% qualified to comment but im going to anyway! lol , imo the corrado would be a tough car to repair at a fair price, the reason being is theres no shut off lines or individual panels on the shell, so you cant just spray the roof or just spray the rear quarter without having a blend line in the clear coat somewhere unless you clear the whole shell {which would almost be a full respray and your be paying for it}, i.e if you look at the roof your see the roof moulding finishing 2inchs before it hits the windscreen and because of that gap the clearcoat has to then go into the pillar and then links to the rear quarter, so the weakest part of your repair will be where they blend the clearcoat into your existing clearcoat, hope you under stand what i mean? the only place i have found that you can hide a blend line is here , take a look on your corrado to see, you never know you may even see a faint line in the clear from a previous repair,

 

 

i dont have any blend lines as i did my whole shell in one go, im sure yours will look awesome when it gets back,

[MarkFoster 0]

One thing that wasn't done well when I had a partial respray was the flatting back, post painting. This tends to show itself as slight waves in the lacquer where it has sank slightly as it dries - just needs a bit of effort with the rotary polisher and some very fine wet & dry. A lot of paint shops will skimp on this if they can get away with it 'cos it's time consuming.

 

Mark

[VW_OwneR_85 1]

One thing that wasn't done well when I had a partial respray was the flatting back, post painting. This tends to show itself as slight waves in the lacquer where it has sank slightly as it dries - just needs a bit of effort with the rotary polisher and some very fine wet & dry. A lot of paint shops will skimp on this if they can get away with it 'cos it's time consuming.

 

Mark

yea waves show up like crazy on a high gloss finish, its not the clear shrinking {if clear shrinks at all, it will shrink all together and not in isolated areas} its highs and lows that havnet been striaghtned by block sanding previous to colour, once your base coat {colour} goes down thats it , theres no return to fix high n lows or anything else for that matter even deep sanding scratchs cant be fixed after the base coat {colour} , it has to be removed in your filler and primer stages useing a guide coat and by block sanding in X pattern to get it straight , if you try and remove a high/low after clearcoat has been applied your asking for a repaint, as your only sand through it ,

 

heres an example of highs n lows from the badge delete which have been highlighted by a guide coat,

at this stage your hand cant even feel them! but if you added the colour and clear , i garuntee you could surf them waves!!

proccess is , more guide coat and keep sanding untill its all gone , add more primer if you burn through to original paint,

 

you can roughly make out 6 circles where the badge holes were , black is a low, completley sanded primer circle is a high,

Edited May 10, 2012 by VW_OwneR_85

[captainredeye 0]

When I get spray work done again I will be more specific to what I want I think sprayers will cut corners as its quite a time consuming process , make sure when the work is done check where the door hinges are and the tops of the wings under the bonnet for over spray its difficult not to get over excited by sparkly new paint

I also think its worth taking the rear window out yourself if on a budget didnt do it on mine and the masking marks by the seals really bug me

[britpop95 0]

Mine came out the body shop today , had front bumper repaired (women reversed into me) wheel arch and rust on bottom of passenger door. The colour match and finish is perfect but the bodyshop then polished it with a machine and there are holograms everywhere when the sun is on it. luckily i did a detailing course last year so i can sort this.

[VW_OwneR_85 1]

heres a good little video of a scratch repair , hopefully give an insite into the work involved for people out there that dont know, its prety simple as its just a door and can be masked up as a complete panal so there wont be any lines hidden anywhere

 

 

also the repair on this rear quarter is very simple as it has panal gaps where he can mask into and completley clear the whole area in one with no blend lines.

now compare that to a corrado!!! where would you guys mask off?? you can now see why the corrado would be a little harder and maybe cost abit more then an average car to repair.

[scarlet_vr6 0]

great info, very interesting. I feel much better prepared now! Vids were good too. Thanks guys :D Collecting my C on Tuesday although I had a sneak preview today. Can't wait to get it back :D

[VAG-hag 0]

False light is your friend, much easier to spot fish eyes, hazines etc. Any good sprayer won't mind you checking and there is a slight orange peel on standard paint so you dont want the new stuff to be 100% flat as it looks odd. Exciting!

[scarlet_vr6 0]

cheers Chris, I'll remember that on Tues :thumbleft:

[Emkayvr6 0]

just look across the panels at an angle or as many angles as possible and make sure the car is dry , imperfections will show themselves,

,im only a diy painter so im not 100% qualified to comment but im going to anyway! lol , imo the corrado would be a tough car to repair at a fair price, the reason being is theres no shut off lines or individual panels on the shell, so you cant just spray the roof or just spray the rear quarter without having a blend line in the clear coat somewhere unless you clear the whole shell {which would almost be a full respray and your be paying for it}, i.e if you look at the roof your see the roof moulding finishing 2inchs before it hits the windscreen and because of that gap the clearcoat has to then go into the pillar and then links to the rear quarter, so the weakest part of your repair will be where they blend the clearcoat into your existing clearcoat, hope you under stand what i mean? the only place i have found that you can hide a blend line is here , take a look on your corrado to see, you never know you may even see a faint line in the clear from a previous repair,

 

 

i dont have any blend lines as i did my whole shell in one go, im sure yours will look awesome when it gets back,

 

Its is possible to blend out on a lot of areas on the Corrado, just need to know how ; ) We do a lots of Aston's and Jags at work and quite often blend on the pillar's if doing a rear quater or roof, we use a fade out blender, a bit like over reduced clear coat, Fade the last coat of clear out before you reach the soft edge of masking, it will be dry at the edges but lightly misting the fade out blender over the dry area will melt the old and new clear together. It will leave a small slightly dry dull edge when you remove the masking but this will polish up nicely with a bit of 2000 and compound to leave an invisible blend with no line or dry areas

[Pete 0]

Mine came out the body shop today , had front bumper repaired (women reversed into me) wheel arch and rust on bottom of passenger door. The colour match and finish is perfect but the bodyshop then polished it with a machine and there are holograms everywhere when the sun is on it. luckily i did a detailing course last year so i can sort this.

 

I have a small area of this, how do you sort it???

[VW_OwneR_85 1]

Its is possible to blend out on a lot of areas on the Corrado, just need to know how ; ) We do a lots of Aston's and Jags at work and quite often blend on the pillar's if doing a rear quater or roof, we use a fade out blender, a bit like over reduced clear coat, Fade the last coat of clear out before you reach the soft edge of masking, it will be dry at the edges but lightly misting the fade out blender over the dry area will melt the old and new clear together. It will leave a small slightly dry dull edge when you remove the masking but this will polish up nicely with a bit of 2000 and compound to leave an invisible blend with no line or dry areas

 

thanks, i recently did this on my audi a3 that had severe arch damage but i didnt want to re clear the whole panel i just wanted my repair area kept beneath the rear quarter trim peice so i blended the clear out i didnt use fade out thinners though but i get the idea behind, i wet sanded the blend out after and then buffed it back to gloss and its prety good, but the colour of the car is audi maya yellow LY1U dont know if thats a hard colour to match ? but looks like i should of faded out the colour further out into the rear quarter as now you can see its slightly darker then the rest, i only faded it out 3" or so , Gutted :( but my filler work turned out good, so in a few weeks i might just scotch the whole rear quarter and blend it out properly , its not realy noticable against the door which is good,

[VAG-hag 0]

How did it go fay?

[Emkayvr6 0]

thanks, i recently did this on my audi a3 that had severe arch damage but i didnt want to re clear the whole panel i just wanted my repair area kept beneath the rear quarter trim peice so i blended the clear out i didnt use fade out thinners though but i get the idea behind, i wet sanded the blend out after and then buffed it back to gloss and its prety good, but the colour of the car is audi maya yellow LY1U dont know if thats a hard colour to match ? but looks like i should of faded out the colour further out into the rear quarter as now you can see its slightly darker then the rest, i only faded it out 3" or so , Gutted :( but my filler work turned out good, so in a few weeks i might just scotch the whole rear quarter and blend it out properly , its not realy noticable against the door which is good,

 

yeah I'd say bring the colour blend out a little further and clear the quater, blend the clear out on the rear pillar as this keeps it small and try the fade out blender, just get it in an aerosol, its not worth the hassle of cleaning guns out just to spray a little mist over the blend. By clearing the whole panel it will give your room to flick the last coat of base from the edge of the arch into the panel rather than follow the arch round. Dont spray the base too wet, although this tends to effect metallics more than solids, but just wet enough so its not dry if that makes sense, it doesnt need to be full wet like the clear, this also allows it to flash off quicker and reduces the chances of solvent pop. with metallics the wetness can lighten/darken the colour more so than with solids ( i'm guessing your using solvents, just as its easier to work with when u haven't got a professional set up) i might have just told u what you already know but it might also help someone that doesn't, anyway just ask if you got and questions/problems

[VW_OwneR_85 1]

thats cool, yea kinda knew some of it, like putting the blend in the clear coat in the smallest place possible so the blend line isnt big, yea its prospray solvent base with u pol system20 2k clear, i was watching a video about blending out and the guy {yank} uses a clear basecoat to reduce the basecoat , i guess its to thin the base out {colour wise not in viscosity} do we have that in the uk? the colour match is mixed to code and is a good enough match that i cant tell the difference looking at the door and the qaurter, you probably could though. i'll probably have another go in a couple of weeks but when i do i'll get some pics up ,atleast its alot better then what it was..