How A Paint Job Can Make Your Old Car Look As Good As New

A coat of fresh paint can make an old 2002 Ford Focus look like a 2002 Ford Focus – every burr under the bonnet will be hidden from view. Likewise, a dented-door saloon can end up looking like a decent used car, earning the seller or hobbyist a satisfactory price for their hard work.

Then comes the sanding, the primer, the colour and the clear coat, all to safeguard the paint against weathering and UV rays.

Choosing the Right Paint

Picking the right paint colour for your car’s body should be one of your most important decisions you will make: a good paint job will ensure your car will keep its value and good looks during the time you are driving it off the lot or trading it in at a dealership.

Based on what you fancy, you can paint your car with several types of paint. Metallic paints have aluminium powder added to them which enables your car to have a subtle glow without appearing too shiny. Pearlescent paints are similar but they use ceramic crystals in place of the aluminium powder and they refract light differently to make your car more colourful.

If you have an eye on keeping the value of your car up, then stick with solid colours such as black or silver. They are easier to take care of since the dark colour hides scratches as well as dirt and other flaws from daily driving a lot better than pastel shades or others. White is another really popular paint colour. It just looks nice, clean and modern. Grey, which some people frown upon, can look cool on just about every vehicle.

Preparation

Thorough surface preparation, including cleaning and priming, will eliminate chips, cracks and other defects that will spoil the results of your labour. The professional completes the same multi-step surface preparation needed when painting kitchen cabinets on interior walls. Simply applying paint to a surface without cleaning, patching defects and priming as needed will, over time, spoil any newly applied coating and ruin the look and life of a new finish.

Rusty spots should also be dealt with before you begin painting: light rust can be sanded away, while heavily rusted areas will need to be treated and sealed before painting to prevent spread of the rust.

If you have the right spray gun, this will be much easier, so check that it’s working properly before you spray the car. The area must also be ventilated to prevent dust from damaging the car’s finish and get into the paint.

The Painting Process

A car that has been repainted to fix rust or accident damage needs a lot of preparation, so that the new paint doesn’t flake off, and all the pits are filled. Many days’ work are required to paint a car.

First, the target area has to be cleaned with soap and water, then sanded with various grit of sand paper to even out the imperfections and make the surface uniformly smooth. And this whole process needs to be conducted in a suitable ambience, due to the wood dust it can create that could be harmful if inhaled.

It needs to be blown off and wiped down with a tack cloth to remove the sanding dust and other minuscule dirt. It might need to be masked, so other parts of the vehicle, like tyres, rims and exhaust tips, are protected from being painted as well. A respirator mask is recommended so breathing in the fumes and making your eyes or lungs irritated doesn’t happen.

Post-Painting Care

It’s like a fresh paint job can make it look like you bought a whole new car but if we take precautions – we should wash it more often, if there’s areas where there’s more risk of damage, rockchips or whatever on the front of the car, we try to be a little more proactive and protect those areas, make sure we’re not parking it in areas where another car might scrape into it and leave some damage, those types of things.

Good maintenance and, particularly in the case of interior walls, regular wiping out of touch-prone spots – banisters, the area around light switches – prevents the build-up of natural oils or soil that also cause discoloration.

If any marks or stains do appear on the walls, wipe them clean as soon as you can because: the stain will dry and be very hard to remove it and the stuff will stick to the far wall and take ages to come down whats with all the little bits of paint sticking to the far wall. You can clean most light stains off your walls fairly easily without damaging the paint work with a non-abrasive sponge and mild soap solution.

Make sure your brushes, rollers and solvent cans are thoroughly cleaned and put away before reuse. Wipe the lip of the can, wash your brushes and rollers or sand rollers, and keep paint and solvent cans out of extreme heat and cold.