You’ve probably heard this before: “A paint job is only as good as the prep work.” If there are scratchs, dents and waves in the base, a shiny coat of paint will only make them obvious. Even though we’re on a budget, we still want the finished job to look great.
Body Work?
It took me a while to realize what body work was all about. There are two simple goals:
- Get the shape you want
- Make it smooth enough for paint
Shaping
The amount of time you spend shaping depends on how straight the body panels are. If you have dents and dings that are deeper than body filler can hide (around 1/8th inch), you need to do some metal work. There are specialized tools to push and pull metal back to its original shape, but that goes beyond the scope of this site. We’re trying to get results without expensive tools or paying someone to use their expensive tools. Check out the Shape It page for more info.
When the body panels are mostly straight, you can use body filler and putty to even things out. The general idea is to fill in the low spots, building a small area that is higher than the surrounding area. Then you sand the newly created high spots down to be level with the surrounding area.
Smoothing for Paint
The paint you will use is self-leveling, but that doesn’t mean it will hide 80 grit sanding scratches! I know this because I tried it, just to test the limits of “self-leveling” for Rustoleum enamel. The amount of smoothing you do at this stage depends on how much color you want to remove later. I learned that dry sanding with 320 grit before you start on color coats is a lot easier than wet sanding all the color off, only leaving paint in the scratches. Very artistic, but not what we’re after! Check out the Make It Smooth page for more info.
