raymondxcho

So for the last few months, I've been riding with my rear bumper like this


Anyways, yesterday, I was sitting in my car in a parking lot and this guy who works at a body shop offered me to fix the dent and crack that it had along with another dent from a golf ball right over my rear right tire.

He torched the bumper and popped out the dent, put some fiberglass? material over the crack, sanded, and then put primer on it. He didn't have my paint so he told me that was my job. All that for a $140 which is not bad compared to paying about $600 at a shop.

He told me that before painting it, I should wet sand it and what not.

Here's how they look like now. (I still need to paint it.)
The last two pictures are the results after he popped the dent, fiberglassed, sanded, and primered.

For those who have knowledge with paint, do I just need to wet sand it and paint it? He didn't mention clear coat or anything which I thought was a part of car painting. And do I need more than one coat of paint? I know I can't make the car look flawless, but I still want to take the right steps.

scooty

For $140 sounds like you got majorly ripped off. Yeah a shop may charge $500 to install a painted bumper but you get a finished flawless looking product for that price. You could have done what he did yourself for less than $20. Oh, and the reason he didn't finish it is because he KNEW it would look terrible and you wouldn't pay him. Slick bastard.

The way he left that bumper is no where near ready to be painted. If you do attempt it to paint it, it's going to look like crap and you'll wish you spent $140 more and got one of those bumpers from EBAY already paint matched and delivered to your door.

Honestly I would just buy a new bumper. You're looking at at least $40 in primer, paint, sand paper, polishing compound, buffer and wax to get it done semi-respectable looking. And yes it needs to be clear coated.

As for the rear quarter, not sure what it looked like before he touched it but I'm pretty sure it looks worse now. Looks like he just used bondo in the dent and primered it over. Dents have to pushed or pulled out, not filled in with filler because it falls out eventually. That whole rear quarter is going to have to be painted and clear coated now. If the dent was small with no paint damage then it could have been knocked back out from behind. Now that there is bondo and primer all over your original paint it's going to cost quite a bit to repair it.

Go back to the parking lot and see if you can find him trying to rip off other people. Grab him and insist he finish his work or at least compensate you for messing up your rear quarter.

raymondxcho

Alright, thanks for your honest answer. I appreciate it.

I'm willing to try fixing this myself though. Any tips you can give me?
I already dropped a a lot of money on this. I'm also watching a crapton of YouTube videos to learn.

As for the rear quarter, it's actually a very small portion . I guess the picture made it look huge. I was thinking of taping off the surrounding area exposing only the affected area and working from there. The dent is gone, he pulled it out.

Yeah, I'll admit, I feel like a fool, but we all have these idiotic moments in our lives right?

So I guess I'll need the paint, high-grit sandpaper, clear-coat (any specifics?)
Anything else?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

SI-Vtek-X

I think that would be okay for paint. You just need to sand it a bit and smooth it out perfect.

raymondxcho

Yeah that's what the dude told me. Wet-sand, then paint.

I just feel like there's more to do than just sand it and paint it though.

Like the clear coat, and I've seen some people use rubbing compound? Not too sure if that's what it's called. Any information on that?

johndeerebones

Rubbing compound it to blend, but it should look almost like the surrounding paint before it's blended. Clear coat is the very last step.

raymondxcho

Thank you. Do you know how long I need to sand it before painting it though? Like how do I know when to stop?

I might use the rubbing compound on my rear quarter since that's the trickier spot.

So after applying the clear-coat and letting it dry, I can just wash and wax my car?

Sorry, I know these are a lot of questions. lol

scooty

Ok since you're already determined to do this, first things first. Be forewarned, this process is labor intensive and will take a month to complete. I'm assuming you don't have access to a paint booth, HPLV spray gun and professional paint products or you would not be posting here.

Next, before any paint, clear coat or rubbing compound touches the bumper it has to be surgically clean and free of dust particles.

Wash with dish soap and warm water. Dry with a clean rag. Then use rubbing alcohol on another clean rag and wipe the whole thing down. Then get a lint free cloth from the car wash and detail section of a place like Autozone and use it to wipe away any tiny fibers left from the other rags. It has to be perfect or the paint will not stick. Buy some cheap raps from the dollar store if you have to. Don't touch it with your bare hands once you have cleaned it. Remember oils can be transferred from your skin or dirty rags.

Now that you know how to surface prep, here are the steps you need to follow.

1. Find a garage where you can paint. Don't do this outside as the wind is full of air borne dust that will get into your finish. If you have to spray outside, either do it early morning or late in the evening when the wind is calm. Do not spray if it's like 95 degrees outside. Check the maximum temp on the spray can to make sure.

2. The paint I recommend is the Duplicolor line of paints called Perfect Match. Your car's paint code is NH623M. Get 2 or three cans of this stuff, a few cans of the Perfect Match clear and a can of Duplicolor filler primer.

3. Yow will be sanding, priming, 3 coats of color, 3 coats of clear and then polishing and waxing. Do the bumper first. Remove it from the car.

4. Lightly sand the area he fixed up with 600 grit. If you can get it perfectly smooth then move on to the next step. If not then you will need to buy filler.

5. Clean the area as described above. Do not get lazy over here.

6. Spray with primer. 2 light coats should be sufficient. wait 10 minutes between coats. Now leave the bumper alone to dry for at least 4 days. Yes 4 days, a week is even better.

7. Wet sand the area with 1000 or 1500 grit. At this point you will most likely have over lapped into good paint. That's ok, don't worry about it.

8. Clean again as described above. Now you are ready for paint and clear.

9. Start with a very light coat of color. Watch some you tube videos to pick up some spray can techniques. The point is to avoid heavy blotches and runs.

10. wait ten minutes and spray on 2 more coats of color, waiting 10 minutes between coats. The final coat should get 100% color depth on the repair area as well as some over lap.

11. Leave the bumper alone for at least 10 days indoors. The paint has to dry. This step is very important since you don't have a temp and humidity controlled paint booth.

12. Clean again but skip the alcohol, it might mess the paint up. spray 3 coats of clear just like you did with the color. The final coat of clear should be pretty heavy. Use a fourth coat if you need to. Once the clear dries it will look dull and imperfect. That's ok.

13. Leave the bumper alone for at least 2 weeks. Very very important. You can put it back on the car if you need to.

14. This is where you blend the clear with the original clear on the car. Use a rotary buffer and some McGuires polishing compound. Don't spend too long on any one spot and remember to keep moving the buffer around. You should be able to get a deep wet looking shine that blends in fairly well with the rest of the bumper. Protect with your fav wax.

15. Pull your hair out when you parallel park for the first time after all this and return to find some *** nut has scratched your beautiful finish.

Good Luck! and post pics of your progress.

raymondxcho

Thanks! Will do.

As for 15, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get hit again sometime, so I figured I'll get a new bumper then. haha

pjb3

I have looked for paint code NH623M in aerosol cans before and I believe Duplicolor does not make it. There are companies that will make up the cans for you but they get expensive.

Also, silver is one of the hardest colors to match.

raymondxcho

I just purchased the duplicolor filler primer, two cans of my specific paint (Duplicolor sells the nh623m), and two cans of the clear-coat. All at Pepboys.

And yeah, I heard silver is hard to match. Sighh, oh well, we'll see how it goes.

scooty

Take pictures of your progress and remember cleanliness and surface prep are key. Good luck!

raymondxcho

So I purchased the supplies I needed.

Two cans of Satin Silver Metallic, Two cans of clear-coat, a can of filler primer, some 600 grit sandpaper, and 1500 grit.


I know it looks dirty but this is after I washed with dishwasher soap and warm water and rubbing alcohol. I used a good amount of alcohol because I wasn't sure if it was clean or not.

Then I took some 600 grit paper and started sanding the affected area. 600 was way tot fine to get any of the excess bondo off. (I realized what a poor job this bastard did on my bumper). So I took some 320 grit I had to try to get some off. Worked a little bit, then went back to 600 to smoothen it out.

I applied two coats of primer waiting 15 minutes between the coats.

Scooty, I know you told me to wait four days for the primer to dry. but time is a bit limited for me bc I do a lot of driving so I might consider painting on Thursday.

The bumper is sitting in the garage with good ventilation and it's always warm and dry in there so that's good news. That's it for now.

spartakus

Good luck on the job man!! I'll be following your progress too...

scooty

Yeah I noticed his crappy work right away, but you got the supplies and motivation on your side!

Looks good so far. The circled areas are going to be problematic for paint adhesion. You need to get those flat and smooth. Hit them with 100 grit. It looks like he used an epoxy based compound so it's going to be hard to sand over it, but the 100 grit should cut through eventually. 100 grit leaves deep gouges so go over the area with 2 or 3 grades of progressively finer grit until you get to 600, say 250 then 400.

Also when you are ready for color and have removed the masking tape and news papers, feather those tape edge lines in with 600-1000 grit or else you will see very noticeable edge lines in your finish.

scooty

Btw when I was doing my bumper i drove around for a month without it and never got in trouble. Several cops saw it and one even trailed me for a bit while he ran my plates but didn't pull me over. I guess it's legal since the cover is just a cosmetic piece and the actual bumper is the steel bar behind the cover.

raymondxcho

I started painting today.

But before I started, I used some heavy grit on the circled spots Scooty pointed out and re-primed it because the primer flaked off. Then when I started wet sanding the whole primered area, it would flake a little bit here and there. Just a few small places.

I applied a bit more primer on those spots in case and let it fan dry for an hour.
Then I sanded it with 1500 grit and got ready for paint.

The first coat was light. The primer was still visible. Waited 10 minutes. Second coat covered most of the primer but a hint of red was still visible. Then my last coat covered up all the red and overlapped some good paint (btw, I made sure I feathered out the sanding on some of the good paint). The paint suprisingly matched up with the surround area pretty well except for the lack of glossiness. All in all, it looks pretty decent except there are some blotches of filler that show from the guy's work. Even 60 grit paper couldn't get it off. But it's hard to see unless you're up close.

One mistake I made while I was painting was spraying too close. For the most part, I kept my distance but there is one spot where I slightly drenched it and the drips are showing. Any way I can get that crap off when the paint dries? I was thinking of using fine sandpaper.

Pictures will be up tomorrow. Couldn't get good shots bc i painted during sundown.

raymondxcho

I've also been doing a lot of research about auto painting. I read that clear coat should be applied within 24 hours after the final coat for best adhesion results.

And I also read that waxing should wait for a few weeks to a few months depending on where I live for the paint to cure or else the paint will be soft.

Can anyone back this up?

Resmondo

Alright im kinda glad this popped up because about a month ago i had some guy back in to my front bumper and it cracked paint and tore some plastic. I was thinking of buying an already primed bumper and get it painted but all the body shops around me are quoting 300 to paint it, thats just the front bumper already primed and off the car i would be doing the installing. does that sound right?

raymondxcho

Well, you're paying 300 for a good paint job.

All my equipment I used to partially do my bumper was a little bit under $50.

I guess if you have the confidence to do it right yourself, go for it but I would leave it up to the pros.

I would have done that if I was smarter lol

scooty

About the clear coat, the whole idea behind waiting 10 days after the color coat is that you are most likely going to have wet sand your color, and paint sands best the drier it is. As long as you wash it up before hand adhesion will not be an issue. Remember this whole process is a compromise between what a typical body shop paint process is and the equipment you are using.

As you can see, waiting for the paint to dry is key over here. Three coats of paint can easily take a month to completely harden. The more coats you have the longer it takes. Once you spray clear do not do anything else for at least 3 weeks, not even a car wash.

As for your paint runs, all the more reason to not spray clear within 24 hours, as that will just lock all the imperfections in. At this point you need to use 1000 grit to smooth the runs out. Might even have to go down to 600 grit. Then respray with color, after washing and cleaning of course.

So you see you will be introducing water and sand paper to your fresh paint. Not ideal, but like I said it's a compromise. The longer you wait for the paint to harden the better. I would not do anything else to it for at least a week to 10 days.

Now, if you were in a paint booth with a professional compressed air paint gun and quality paints, the color would have gone on smooth with no imperfections and you would be able to spray clear within 24 hours for max adhesion.

scooty

Sounds about right, although you could probably get them to primer it as well for that price.

Here is what I recommend. For around 300 you should be able to get a painted bumper shipped to your door. Just search online for pre painted bumper covers, there are a few companies that do this.

In the mean time if you have an $50-60 and a LOT of free time then buy filler, primer, paint etc and start repairing your original bumper. If you mess it up, oh well. If it looks decent than either keep it as a spare or sell on here for like a $100 and feel happy that you picked up a valuable skill.

raymondxcho

Just an update on my car.

So I had the clear coat done a few days ago.
Everything looked great. I fixed the drips, the paint matched surprisingly well. I was just gonna wait two weeks or so for the rubbing compound and then, I crack my bumper hitting my house wall while backing into the driveway. It was a <4mph impact and the filler stuff came off and the cracked part was exposed.

I just decided to give up on the bumper and go with an 04-05 bumper from ebay already painted. So I ordered one today. Hopefully it comes in this week but it will come by next week.

As for the rear quarter, I will just have a body shop take care of it.

I'll just use my leftover supplies when I get a new lip kit or something.

scooty

After all that work....I would be like

Looks like you did a good job on that paint too. Oh well live and learn. Good decisions to go with 04-05 bumper. I would not waste any more time or money on that bumper.

spartakus

wow the paint actually matched the rest of the car pretty neat!!
but anyway, i think the 04~05 will look even better too...

raymondxcho

Thanks, it seems to look even better now that the paint had some time to cure.

So today was the day my REAR bumper was supposed to come but they gave me a front 04-05 bumper instead for who knows why. Like how the hell do you get that mixed up? Do they not double check the order before starting the work?
My online receipt says 04-05 Honda Civic REAR bumper. It was even in caps for Christ's sake. Sorry I know I'm ranting. I waited 9 days just to receive the wrong one.

Not gonna lie though, it looks nice and their paint quality is pretty good actually. Looking at their ebay vendor reviews, they seem pretty legit. D&H autoparts if anyone ever needs a replacement body part for cheap with paint.

Their customer service sucks though. They keep telling me to contact their "error" department via email because no one is there to answer the phone. And as I expected I got no reply via email. So I'll give them a call tomorrow and demand some service.

scooty

Error dept? lol!! how much did that bumper cost? I might pick one up

raymondxcho

QUICK UPDATE.

Scratch out what I said about their crappy service. It just turned a whole 180 degrees.

They got back me via email and apologized. They said they'll send out the correct bumper once it is finished with overnight shipping. Awww yeeah.

AND they told me to just keep the front and do whatever I want with it because the cost of sending it back exceeds the price of the bumper itself and it's not worth it to them. They were really nice about it.

So I decided to sell that thing on Craigslist and use the money to pay a body shop to fix my rear quarter.

Every works out.

I bought the rear on eBay for $264. Not sure how much the front is but I'm guessing it's around there.

scooty

Sweet! things really worked out for you!