Some paint questions.

[dknight3]

Need some advice from the painters out there.

1) what is the proper way to REpaint plastic?
i was thinking about just sanding down to the factory primer and hitting it with high build primer and then base and clear.

2) what is the proper way to paint plastic?
There are some spots where it was never painted from the factory that i want to go over, ive heard many different ways of doing this but a lot of them seem very complex.
adpro, epoxy, high build, base, clear? seems like a lot of money wasted on primer, and it seems like it would be very hard to get it to blend into surrounding areas.

3) what is the proper way to seal bondo?
I put bondo on bare metal and feathered it into the paint and put some spray can self etching primer that i plan to sand off.
Don't really know where to go from here because i am afraid if i just use filler primer it wont be properly sealed.
is it necessary to seal all bondo with a sealer or epoxy before hitting it with filler primer?

basic answers will work, and i am still reading up on the subjects i just wanted to get some opinions from TGCers.
will post build thread soon i have a bunch of projects :)



oh yea i plan on using all spi products except base coat. any recomendations for a decent base coat at a good price (preferably available online)? spi wants 200 a gal for black paint....

[Galantman03]

Ill explain some things that I have done, and that have worked for me.

1) If the paint is not damaged (aka rock chips or peeling) Then you can hit the paint on the urethane bumper with a scotch brite pad. The red one is what I used for before primer, and I also used a light gray one to gently scuff up the base(NON metallic), and then cleared it.

2) Plastic is a little hard to prep though, but i would scuff it up with 220 grit, and then primer it, sand that down and then repeat, till i built up a layer that i felt was more than enough for the base.

3) Primer is one way, and sealer is another way. if you have a high build primer, you can add some more thinner to it and it becomes sealer. So, in reallity you can do primer and sealer jobs with just a high build primer.

For paint I used a generic brand called wanda the first time i painted, and it matched pretty good. The second time I used PPG and the extra price was totally worth it. I paid $120 for 1 quart.

[djaltamira]

For base coat try automotivetouchup.com, they color matching is pretty good. It probably would have been perfect had I known how to paint correctly