Touchup woes

T

tssdetailing

New member
I was working on an 07 metallic beige A4 this weekend. The paint required a lot of touch up spots. Some were deep rashes which required bondo fill first. I bought paint from automotivetouchup.com and was very pissed when I came to find that I could NOT sand the base coat after brushing it on as it would blush the metallics and basically change it from beige to silver (someone told me that the metallic fleck sinks to the bottom and the color comes to the top, so when i sanded, i was removing the color). That being said....HOW THE HELL am i supposed to perform the correction? Even adding clearcoat over the sanded base was no help. Their website instructs you to put down multiple base layers, no sanding then apply clear and sand that. Well, in doing that, you could see brush strokes under the clear. Needless to say, i've ruined this person's car. :mmph:





pix added

paintWoes1.jpg




paintWoes2.jpg
 
I've never been a fan of sanding touch up areas. Especially when doing it with a bondo/filler product too. Always a good idea to practice on a test panel before going at in on a customer's vehicle. Why do you think you ruined this person's car? Can't you just remove the paint?
 
If it's possible/convenient, post some pics, so folks can offer what you can do; or did you have to return the car to the customer that way?
 
tssdetailing- I'm kinda surprised that you felt the need to sand the basecoat, that the clear couldn't take care of any irregularities :think: Maybe try different approaches with regard to applying the basecoat- does it need thinned? applied with a different brush? allowed to dry more between coats?



Not surprised that touching up a metallic would turn out less-than-swell though, mine almost always do.



I'd just try wiping away the touchup with a solvent (I like Langka, others use lacquer thinner) and starting over.



I won't beat you up about trying an unproven approach on a customer's car ;)
 
You can't sand any sort of metallic. You have to apply it thin, then use clear to level it. I'm wondering what sort of gouges need bondo, are you fixing curb rash? If so, you'll need to blend instead of sand, and it will still look like crap on close inspection.
 
Sounds like a tricky repair from the get go, filler makes minor touch ups complicated and I always find that with small touch ups it is easer to layer up the paint itself as a filler if possible as it's easier to work knowing that there's plenty of depth to play with

I'd be keen to see a picture if you have any to show of the damage before?



FWIW I reckon the damage was already done, I doubt you wrecked his car.
 
sorry for the late reply, had some computer trouble. The first pic is the paint brushed on (i used an artist brush, not the one in the cap). the 2nd is after sanding-you can see the color has been removed. This particular area looked like if you took a chisel to the car and created a dent with a huge scratch in the middle. So it had to be filled and then painted. What is solvent-what does that do as for leveling the brush strokes? I did a gloss black lex a few months ago, using bondo and sanding paint and it came out incredible-that's why i felt i could do it again on this.



paintWoes1.jpg




paintWoes2.jpg
 
That looks like an awfully huge area to be brushing touch-up onto... I'd have broken out an airbrush or mini detail gun at that point if anything, though to be honest it appears it was already at the point of needing a date with a paint booth.
 
The way a spot like that is normally done is the area is sanded with 1000 or less and the base coat is feathered good bit away from the problem area. It looks to me like you didn't finish sanding the Bondo before you painted it. All those little bubles in the Bondo should be gone and 600 grit smooth. After the repair is done properly you would apply the base t an area that is well beyond the dent repair. The base is feathered probably about 10 inches or more beond the repaired area. Then you would spray the sanded panel with clear. That area is way to big to do with a brush. It looks like it is about as big as the palm of my hand.
 
The RIGHT way to repair that area is a complete repaint. Sorry, but anything else will just be a 1/2 assed repair.
 
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