DIY Side Skirt, Arches - re-spray

namaste

Member
Messages
212
DIY Side Skirt, Arches: Re-spray

Just a quick few photos of the re-spraying of my side skirts and arches (well one side anyway). This is pretty much it for the body work other than a few stone chips on the front end and an all over detail. The body work is now pretty much immaculate (or will be when I do the other side of the car), and is certainly one of the reasons I bought this car over some others I was viewing that had some pretty deep scratches and gouges on the edges of panels etc.

This was the condition of the side skirt (driver side). Looks bad but thats the underside. GTs don't like the speed bumps much.

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Still some double sided tape on here from the kickplate but you can see the scratches from shoes getting in and out the car, some gone down to primer. I could have touched these up, but I was going to respray the bottom half of the skirt anyway, so instead of doing a half job I decided to go the whole hog. Got plenty of paint.

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Heres the general condition of all the arches. The outsides (i.e. the panel side of the arches) are fine, its just the inner lips that have been bombarded with grit flying off the tyre surface over the years.

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And here was a surprise, a small dent that I never saw before on the lower edge of the door just before the crease. This lower edge has a smattering of small chips (too small to touch up) so I'll be respraying this section up to the crease and blending the lacquer on the crease. You'll never notice, especially way down there.

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namaste

Member
Messages
212
After some rubbing down and filling (looks horrid):

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Primer down on the arches. I'm spraying up to the edges of the arches and blending into the edge. With a little flattening and polishing it will be invisible:

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Dent gone :) Again, blending up to that lower crease. Fold back the masking tape on itself so you don't get a sharp edge. I pulled off the tape and flattened down the primer to blend it before re-masking and spraying.

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Side skirt primed and flattened

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namaste

Member
Messages
212
New side skirt. I was a little worried with the colour match, it looked darker. But having brought it out into the light and positioning it in place, its spot on, even to my critical eye. Some of these pics without flash are a bit dark. The lacquer finish is about on a par with the factory clear coat. I'll probably give it a little flattening though.

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Arches. Just finished spraying today. I'll leave it a day or two before getting to work on blending the edges.

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The white specks are the metallic, probably reflecting off the flash.

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Lower door. Pictures are pretty bad, its hard to get a focus, but you can just see where the fresh lacquer meets the flattened matt crease. The fresh lacquer edge will get flattened and blended into the old, then polished up. It will be invisible unless you get down there with a magnifying glass.

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And thats it. I'll probably do another photo when its all back together. I won't bother doing photos for the other side. Once its done, on to the detailing. :)
 

safrane

Member
Messages
16,714
Great to see these 'How To' posts... although I don't have the patience or abilty to tackle myself.
 

namaste

Member
Messages
212
Thanks all. I love spraying, I'd do this all day if it wasn't for the prep work, which unfortunately takes up 90% of the time. And masking... I hate masking up.

Spent a good hour today trying to get that double sided tape off the back of the kick plate. Still some on there. Apparently WD40 is good for that but I've run out.
 

conaero

Forum Owner
Messages
34,582
Nice work, can I ask what you used to do it, was it rattle cans or did you use spray gun/compressor?
 

namaste

Member
Messages
212
Nice work, can I ask what you used to do it, was it rattle cans or did you use spray gun/compressor?

It was all 2k paint, with spray gun/compressor. There's a paint shop on the industrial estate in town where I get all my materials from, they do colour matching so I left my headlight washer cover with them for a day or two to get the colour match spot on.

Congrats on the new car by the way. Love white with black wheels.