Side Skirt Restoration - Lots and lots of pics
Posted: Thu Jul 19, 2007 7:20 pm
My lower side skirts had been resprayed at some point in the cars life. Unfortunately it was a really bad job and the paint was literally flaking away from the panels. After a quote of roughly $300 (mates rates) just to get the right skirt done i thought id give it a shot myself and if worst comes to worse, i can always get it done professionally. Originally i was only going to do the front right side skirt but the finish came up so well that it made the doors skirt look really crap...so, i did the lot! Here are the pics of the complete paint restoration of the right hand side skirts from front right hand lower quarter back to the door. I decided to ditch the textured finish (stone protection layer) and go with a nice smooth polished look. Resonably simple steps to follow and an awesome result.
In total: 4 coats of primmer, roughly 10 coats of colour matched paint and 5 clear coats (extra coats to acommodate the removal of the stone guard primmer stuff) - all paint/primmer was from a can! It only proves what can be achieved if you have a bit of patients Its all in the preparation, painting was the easy bit!
Sorry for a few of the images, they were taken with my phone. I acutally have 150 odd photos of this on my camera but have only posted the most relevant ones.
Step 1: Strip old paint, sand, bog and sand
Step 2: Primmer, sand, primmer, sand etc etc (4 layers in total)
Step 3: Paint
Step 4: Sand
Step 5: AutoGlym Paint renovator
At this stage no clear coat has been applied. I waited a week for the paint to cure properly before clear coating. In the mean time, i got stuck into the door skirt...
half way through my scraper broke...all i can say is thank god for cable ties
Note in this next picture how the tape was moved to the top of the side indent strip thingy. This is so i can easly blend the paint in to the orginal paint and also to be less conspicuous to see.
And after some paint renovator to get it ultra smooth and shiny... (still no clear coat btw)
And finally the clear coat, sanded and buffed. What a result <--see next post
In total: 4 coats of primmer, roughly 10 coats of colour matched paint and 5 clear coats (extra coats to acommodate the removal of the stone guard primmer stuff) - all paint/primmer was from a can! It only proves what can be achieved if you have a bit of patients Its all in the preparation, painting was the easy bit!
Sorry for a few of the images, they were taken with my phone. I acutally have 150 odd photos of this on my camera but have only posted the most relevant ones.
Step 1: Strip old paint, sand, bog and sand
Step 2: Primmer, sand, primmer, sand etc etc (4 layers in total)
Step 3: Paint
Step 4: Sand
Step 5: AutoGlym Paint renovator
At this stage no clear coat has been applied. I waited a week for the paint to cure properly before clear coating. In the mean time, i got stuck into the door skirt...
half way through my scraper broke...all i can say is thank god for cable ties
Note in this next picture how the tape was moved to the top of the side indent strip thingy. This is so i can easly blend the paint in to the orginal paint and also to be less conspicuous to see.
And after some paint renovator to get it ultra smooth and shiny... (still no clear coat btw)
And finally the clear coat, sanded and buffed. What a result <--see next post