Auto body questions(ask here)

Okay, good to know. Guess I forgot how big cars are compared to models!

i can answer most auto body question , so if you have any more just ask

hey corey, ive got an 82 honda cx 500(motorcycle) that i tried repainting a month or so ago. i sanded the factory paint and cleaned it with some degreaser and then put some coats of flat black and clear over it. problem is that the paint didnt stick very well and the string i had the tank hanging from drifted a bunch of fibers down to stick in the paint. i think the reason the paint didnt work out was that it was to cold. i was at about 65 degrees.

Now i have this black and clear mess all over everything, should i try taking it all the way down to bare metal or should i just get whats on it now smoothed out and lay over it again. working with rattle cans, on a budget. thanks.

ok what you should do is sand that all down with 180 grit sand paper wet, then sand it 180 dry, but make sure that you clean it very very very VEEEERRRRYYYYYYY GOOD. wash it with car soap and water then go to a auto body store get some 3900 cleaner and some 3901 cleaner. wash it with 3900 and dry asap with clean cloth not cotton then do the same with the 3901.make sure that u have a respirator on, cuz those will fuck u up big time trust me . ok now do the sanding. after you got it all good wash it will 3901 again same as before, hit it with ur primer, then wait 30 mins for it to flash(start to dry) then hit it will 2-3 coats of color and let it flash for 5 min between coats and after ur done with color let it dry for 20-30 mins then hit it with clear,3 coats max is what i do. but how many coats is up to you. then let it dry. dont touch it for 48 hours yes hours not mins HOURS. make ur its at least 70* at the lowest. and if you have any more questions ask

here not hear

how much would it cost to pull/pop out a small dent in a 1/4 panel?

depending on the shop and were u live most shops in NY charge about 45-60 bucks an hour, the process can be done in about 3 hours with paint and everything

What size dent? Maybe you can go to a PDR guy.

i can only really see it at angles. i think there is a guy loacaly that charges like 70 per dent if it's under a certain size (and mine would be) i didnt know if that was a good price or not.

Man, I hope not. @ $70 I have a few hundred dollars of door dings.

FWIW my mechanic told me about a local pdr guy who he said could "walk up and down the car popping the dents out as he went." If he's charging $70/minute I'm changing careers.

I seriously doubt it's that easy. I'd be worried if someone did anything to my car that quickly. But if he's really that good, he deserves $70/min.

I have a very minor dent in my rear pass quarter panel (received in a Lowe's parking lot, apparently "furniture inflicted"); I would pay $70 to have it removed, and would hope they took their time doing it right.

that's the same spot mine has a ding. bugs the hell out of me every time i see it!
a year ago someone hit my driver rear panel with a baseball and left a good size dent, but luckily i was able to hammer it out from inside the trunk without much damage to the paint. a little bit of stress cracks but other than that its 90% repaired. i'm afraid i cant hammer this dent out b/c its not accessable from the trunk and it's more of a sharp ding than a round dent.

I might try that from inside the trunk. Mine's right above the rear wheel, can only see it from certain angles.

I'm looking to paint my mufflers and tips black soon because the majority of both the mufflers and tips are sort of blackish with big blotches of stainless steel still visible on the mufflers. It looks totally ugly.

My tips and mufflers are covered with the ordinary road crap that compiles and doesn't like to go away. I'm wondering what to do to my exhaust system in the back in order to paint it. Don't know a helluva lot about this, and it may not pertain exactly to the car's body. But how would I go about painting the mufflers and tips, Corey?

i would clean them up as best you can. use maybe a steel brush? then go over them with a can of black mat engine paint. it will withstand the heat, not be flashy, and keep it from rusting more. mask off any bumper of course

hey palemoore, me with the motorcycle again, what is this 3900 and 3901 cleaner you speak of, was searching on the internet so i have some idea of what im looking for and dont look like a complete dumba$$ going into a store, help me out a little? also whats the price and quantity were lookin at here? thanks...

AA wrote:

I'm no body expert, but isn't 40 grit pretty coarse? Why not a little finer (80-100 for ex.)?

I think I have done my share of body work and I agree with Aaron!

Also, I work with aluminum on a regular basis and if you use 40 grit to remove anything from the hood, which is aluminum on our Rivs, it would take ten or twenty coats of any kind of scratch filling primer to fill the marks something that course would leave! I used 40 grit one time and that was to remove the paint from my '65 Riviera, which was two coats of paint that was 35-40 years old, and a car that was made from real metal! If you use anything more than an 80 grit sandpaper on anything build in the last several years you are just asking for trouble and making more work for yourself if you can correct it at all!

greg_anderson_78 wrote:

hey palemoore, me with the motorcycle again, what is this 3900 and 3901 cleaner you speak of, was searching on the internet so i have some idea of what im looking for and dont look like a complete dumba$$ going into a store, help me out a little? also whats the price and quantity were lookin at here? thanks...

its a degreaser very strong stuff

99Rivman wrote:

AA wrote:

I'm no body expert, but isn't 40 grit pretty coarse? Why not a little finer (80-100 for ex.)?

I think I have done my share of body work and I agree with Aaron!

Also, I work with aluminum on a regular basis and if you use 40 grit to remove anything from the hood, which is aluminum on our Rivs, it would take ten or twenty coats of any kind of scratch filling primer to fill the marks something that course would leave! I used 40 grit one time and that was to remove the paint from my '65 Riviera, which was two coats of paint that was 35-40 years old, and a car that was made from real metal! If you use anything more than an 80 grit sandpaper on anything build in the last several years you are just asking for trouble and making more work for yourself if you can correct it at all!

you are right for aluminum i would use 180 grit