Hey, it’s Tony. Thank you for watching the video and checking out the blog. Today’s blog is all about Step by Step Auto Body And Car Painting Footage for Newbies.
We’re doing a ’98 Dodge Ram project. I’m helping my godfather out which he got as a quick flip. We’re not going to do some crazy show job on it but he wanted to take out some of the large dents on this truck, paint the front and the bed. I’ll show you exactly how to do this.
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It looks like it got hit in the front so we’ll pull this grill off, take the dent out and bondo it out flat. What I’m thinking about the grill is to clean it up and paint it flat black so it will look really nice.
The dents and scratches on the side are easy. It will only take me twenty minutes to take it out, put some bondo, grind and weld and put some pins to pop it out. We’ll paint it green from the lower bottom up, base and clear the side of the bed.
Before doing any real body work, grind down all the damage areas, this way you can do all your spot welding, pull out the dents, do your filler and all of that.
Maintain clean the area that has to be body worked with a grinder. Watch as my godfather does spot welding the first time. Not too bad for a 76-year old!
Sand with 80-grit around all your body work areas before laying any kind of putty, so you can feather in your body work and bondo. Do you see how we have it scuffed all around the areas? That’s very important, this way we can blend it in.
Then, we’ll do a little bit of rasping to save some sanding time. Rasp is always pretty cool to use. I showed you how to do that in the other videos.
Now, we’re laying our second coat of body filler. Large dents usually take two to four coats, depending on how much body work there is. Small areas usually need one to two coats. Then we’ll rasp it down again.
We’ll use the straight sander, put some guide coat and hand block doing a crisscross pattern. You can use a 40-grit, 60-grit or an 80-grit, which I’m using.
My godfather is sanding the whole hood down with a 320-grit. Then, I’m using a straight sander on the quarter panel for a nice, flat edge. Watch how I do it on the fender crease.
Once you learn to use these tools, you’ll see that they’re pretty fun to use. They’ll save you some time and it’s a very fun process.
We’ll spray a little bit more guide coat so we can use our block and finish it off nice and flat. Then, after this it’s done.
We’ll go ahead and put some polyester putty and fill all of this in nicely. We laid about three heavy coats of polyester putty. Then, what you have to do after, is check for imperfections.
If you there are chips that you missed, you can fill it in with regular putty. I used a polyester glazed putty in a tube.
Then, cut everything down with 400-grit wet sand. You can cheat and use a DA sander quick then wash it off with a 400-grit wet sand. Then, you’re ready for paint.
If we’re ready for paint and saw that we missed a chip, It’s not too late. All you have to do is dry the area then, use a polyester spot putty and block sand it out.
I’ll show you my father’s trick with the mask. He puts a little toilet paper so it serves as a pre-filter. It takes out a lot of the initial heavy overspray.
Let’s mix our paint up and tack it down. The tack rag is the final step. My godfather is tacking all the panels down and getting it ready for paint. We already did our wax and grease remover.
Then, we can start our base coat. The base coat is a 50/50 mixture. We’ll lay two to three coats of base and two heavy coats of clear.
When doing touch up repair jobs like this, you will always want to cover the primer area first. You can see that I’m not painting the whole hood yet. I’m going to put two coats on the primer areas then go over the entire panel with two coats as well.
If you just covered the whole panel, the primer areas will still be a little bit grey. Make sure you get it to the same color first and then paint the whole panel.
Now, watch as I base the entire hood. We have hail damage on the hood but we didn’t want to spend too much time doing a bunch of body work.
We just wanted to make the main front grill fixed up. My godfather is flipping the truck and we decided that it wasn’t worth the extra time to put into the hood and to do a show job. It wasn’t worth it at all.
We’ll fill up the gun one more time then lay our second coat of clear. We have 50 percent overlay. We’re spraying at about 29 to 30 psi. We’re getting great atomization. It’s going to come out nice and glossy.
I purposely left this section of the video long because a lot of people want to see the painting process. How I actually spray. We are spraying at about four to six inches away from the panel and making sure it’s nice, wet and glossy.
One thing where a lot of newbies make a mistake is they don’t put enough clear on it. That’s why it comes out dry and orange peely. Orange peel is not enough clear, drying too quickly, improper mixture, spraying incorrectly, spraying at a too low psi.
What I’m saying is don’t be afraid to lay your clear coat on. It is easier to fix out and buff out a run than it is to buff out a dry spot. It’s better to have more clear than not enough.
One of my favorite parts is taking out all the paper. It’s like Christmas unwrapping your gifts.
Now, we’ll do some plasti-dip on the front grill. We’re peeling off the excess plasti dip off the emblem. It’s pretty much done. We’re buffing out the rest of the panels so it brings out the resilience of the old paint to match the new paint. We didn’t really do a blend job, we just did a touch-up.
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Talk to you soon! Bye!
Tony
Other Helpful Links:
House of Kolor Pearl, Kandy, Clear Coat Demo – Jon Kosmoski & Tony Bandalos
How To Repair and Paint Your Truck Step by Step – Part 1
Secrets To Spraying Silver Basecoat Plus Tacking Tips When Painting
Automotive Sandpaper Grits for Painting a Car – Day 2 Boot Camp
Top 10 Auto Paint Repair Problems and Solutions
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You should do a video like this in spanish. It would help people like my husband.
Thanks for the feedback, Pamela! Will review this with the team!