How To: Fix your plastic Front Lip

[Valk]

Introduction

First of all, I am not writing this guide as a replacement for the other guide written by mazdaspeed777.
I personally referenced that one when i repaired my p5 bumper a few years ago and it was a life "money" saver.

I am writing this primarily as a "How I did it" for people wanting to take a stab at repairing their own front lips and ground effects.
If is going to be pretty long, but I take lots of pics so please do read through it completely before starting your project.

Most body shops will encourage you to replace the part as the hours of labour spent are going to outweigh the cost of a new part.
I'm sure some people out there who are actually autobody techs would be able to do this job in much less time than i did. I spent some where in the ball park of 10 hours doing the actual repair work and 3-4 hours prepping/painting it.
For me, it was a learning experience and I could not have done this without countless references on the internet, and my own bodyshop jobber at jb precision engines. I paint for a living, but I spray lacquer based single stage paint.
Base coat clear coat took a bit of practice heh.

I know you don't read Mazda forums Jim, but you saved my life!
I'd also like to thank him for the hours of his time spend on trying to match my paint... I drive a Blazing yellow msp and ill tell you, when the body shop guy says its going to cost this stupid amount of money to paint it, he means it.
Matching a tricoat is next to impossible without blending a large portion of your car. for my purpose, close enough was good enough as the whole part is getting painted and there is a definite seam seperating the two parts.

The kind of damage is also going to dictate how or if you should take this project on yourself.

• If you have a dent or crush damage, you can repair this fairly easily with a heat gun and some body filler.
• if you have tears, rips shreads ect, you will need a plastic repair epoxy filler/welding kit. something that will actually bond the plastic and can be used to build it up.
• if your tear is very large, or you have a hole in your piece, you will need reinforment patches to use with your epoxy kit.

I was very lucky and only had a crushed corner to push out. I needed to build up the corner a little bit as well, fill rash, fill a tear and many rock chips.

 

[Valk]

The Laundry list

I already had much of the required tools for this job from previous stuff i've done. If your unsure of what products to use from your supplier, ask. the terms are the same, the products might be a little different.

1. You will need verious sanding supples;

• 80, 220, 400, 600 and 800 grit sandpaper. If you have a lot of body repair to do, get lots of 80 grit. its the only stuff that will get through the epoxy filler. for 220 and above get wet/dry sandpaper.
• you can also grab a dual action sander if you wanna save some time, and you know how to use one
• A block to wrap sand paper around. you can buy a rubber one or make one as long as is flat on one side. I used a peice of scrap birch plywood
• Some shop rags to wipe off sanded dust

2. If your damage require bonding plastic together, or building it up; you need a plastic repair kit. This one was a two part epoxy for semi rigid plastics. don't get one for hard plastics. it will crack on flexible parts like urathane bumper plastics. Does not stick to paint.

3. Spot filler. This is not bondo putty. I'm sure that will work but this is specially formulated to not shrink. hardens rock hard in minutes and works well to fill in pinholes, scratches and light rash.

4. Heat gun. Use this to massage out large dents and crush damage.

5. Filler primer. I didn't actually NEED this but its helpful for highlighting areas you still have to sand more. pick a contrasting color and use it as a guide coat. this will fill small scraches from sanding and pin holes, not much else though.

6. Paint

Most of you are probably going to be using rattle bombs to do your paint. For the most part this will work just fine but i advise budgeting a little extra money to buy a few extra cans to practice with. If your spraying a solid color like, p5 yellow, its much easier than a pearl or metallic but you are still going to want to try and make a sample to make sure you are able to spray the color evenly.

auto painters will do something called a spray out card which is just a primed card that you spray color on. typically a portion of it is 2 coats, 3 coats, 4 coats and so on. masking between coats to differenciate. this will tell the painter how many coats of paint he needs to cover the object.

Coverage is the key here. When spraying basecoat/clear coat you aren't trying to spray for build or shininess when putting down a color coat. you are trying to get the paint as even as possible and get 100% coverage without sopping it on with a sponge.
your color coat is going to look dull, but don't take this as a queue to apply more paint!

BC/CC relies on your clear to bring out the color, and any effects you mix in.

Single stage paints are a different process as you ARE going for build and wetness. in single stage, you have your color and a hardner added that makes the product shine when it cures. better single stages are just as resiliant to uv and scrathes as a good clear but these are meant mainly for single color finishes.

A gloss or satin black is a good place to use a single stage paint. also whites, reds ect. you have to be more careful though, as any dust or lint that lands in it has to be sanded and repainted, where if something lands in clear, you can usually just buff it out and put some more clear on.

For pretty much all our purposes here though, we are going to stick to bc/cc two stage paint. so when havnig your color made up, specify you want dual stage paint.

if your spraying with a gun and air compressor, you will get a few cans of raw paint. some brands need reducers or hardeners fro their paint. some have a reducer added when its made to make it ready to spray.

Primers and clears will typically require a activator which also reduces the product. Activators react to the product to heat it up and harden it. so you should not add activator untill you are ready to apply it as the shelf life will be a matter of hours.

If you are using bombs, you don't have to worry about any of this as the required products are added when mixing your cans. primers and clears are usually sold to you right off the shelf, but i advise against going different places to get a deal.
unless the body shop guy explicitly tells you the generic product is compatible with their paint system, dont do it.
Exceptions are in clears i guess. Clear is clear is clear as long as its an automotive product.

Regardless of the system you are going to use, buy enough paint to do a your part, as well as a spray out card of two. Get some cheap rattle can clear and some walmart plain white flash cards.

Last thing that i found to really helped is to talk to a sales person who has actually painted s***. get any advice you can. they wont always just wanna sell you this or that, sometimes they will actually give you some valuable advice.

 

[Valk]

Repair work

First thing is to get everything apart you need to fix.

There was a small dent on the bumper from where the lip crushed it.

I simply popped it out with the heat gun and the wood side of a 2 lb sledge.
Heat the back of the lip evenly with the heat gun until you can just keep your hand on the front Side.
if you cant keep your hand there, fan your heat out to the surrounding area and try to keep it consistant. if you apply too much heat, the part will melt, or become brittle when it cools.
Used the handle to kind of massage the dent out. apply a little more heat and do it again until i got the dent out as much as i could and smoothed any creases. you wont be able to get the creases out completely, but that's what the filler is for.
for the bumper, this was just fine and you cant tell it was there.

I cleaned all the sticky crap off with "Acetone FREE" nail polish remover.. Acetone is not friendly to paint....
I put the bumper back on as i needed to drive my car to work ect.

Same process to pop the dent out of the lip. You can do this without heat. depends how bad your dent is. but heat makes it easier to massage out deformations.

which filler you wanna use is up to you. I used my epoxy filler to fill in the valley's remaining from popping the dent out, and trying to build up the natural curve a little bit.
I also used it on the rash, and I think my spot filler would have been easier to do that with. try things out and figure out what works.



Sanded all the paint off the area's that needed the epoxy filler with 80 grit sand paper. dont worry about scratching stuff here. lots more sanding still to come.

One thing i didn't add to the shopping list was a spreader for the filler. get one, i used chop sticks to mix and apply this stuff =O.

Also, you don't need to gob it on like this either. the more filler you put on the more you have to sand off. this stuff was as hard as bumper plastic. took forever to sand with 80 grit on a block, which is where a dual action sander would have come in handy.


After block sanding with 80 grit for what seemed like a decade, everything felt even to the touch; I applied some filler primer to see where i still needed to work.

after sanding for hours, your fingers get kinda numb to small variations in the surface. we are going for flush, which is why you use a block.
so with the filler primer, we highlight the areas that felt flush, but might not be perfect yet.
Rule of thumb generally, if you can feel it, paint will highlight it like a bulls eye.

I block sanded there ares that needed more flushing with 220 grit paper.

when i was satisfied that the repair areas were level and flush, i free hand sanded the whole peice with 220. really gave it to it as i was trying to get as much of the filler primer of as i could.

gave it a wipe, and applied spot filler to and pits or deep scratches still left.

just like cutting yourself shaving =)

block sanded the filler spots until they were close to flush, then tore off finger sized pieces of 220 to buff them down flush.

I then sanded the entire piece with 400 grit dry paper to prep it for primer. wiped it down. gave it a good feel up to make sure it was all flush and proper.

 

[Valk]

Summery of my Repairs

So far i've;

• Removed a dent in plastic using a heat gun and wood side of a sledge
• Sanded the entire piece getting it ready for various fillers
• Applied, sanded and leveled fillers over the repair areas
• Sanded the part prepping for paint

I have repaired all the rash, restored the curve of the lip from where i hit it, filled a tear in one of the corners and filled all the rock chips.

Last thing to do before paint is to give it a good bath using hot water and dish soap. I used dawn =)

 

[Valk]

once your part is all clean you can set it up in your spray area, blow it off and give it a good wipe down with a tack cloth

This will collect any fine dust particles so they dont end up in your paint. dont work in a breezy area and try to cover up the surrounding area to prevent over spray.
protect yourself with a respirator and try to cover up as much skin as you can. carbon dust mask at the very least assuming you are working outdoors. if its not black it doesn't have carbon!

Im using a sata jet 100 bfrp for this project with a tip size of 1.6mm. this is a little big for auto paint and ill put out more than i would with a proper size gun. still, helluva lot better than a rattle can, and sata is very forgiving.
if you can only afford one gun though, a 1.6 isn't a bad option since it will allow you to spray the thicker primers *jet 100 is a base/filler gun, but we use it to spray single stage wood paint*, you can choke it down to spray metalics and stuff for your base coats, and will do well with clears.

most body shop peeps will recommend a 1.3 or 1.4.

Im not gonna teach you how to paint, but typically, ill apply one or two thin coats of primer to get a tack, then a nice thick coat. don't worry about small runs as you will sand this a fair bit. just don't slop it on all gangster.

once completely covered, and dry; went sand with clean warm water, starting with 220 grits and working your way up to 600 grit.
if you have orange peel, which is a chunky like finish, spend more time with the 220. you shouldnt see and low spots in the primer when you are done and the entire surface should look uniformly dull.

obviously, if you feel anything, sand it more. nothing should be rough.
if it helps, apply a very thin coat of rattle can primer to act as a guide coat for sanding. sand untill you have eliminated all the guide coat color.

don't sand higher than 600 grit though. base coat needs a nicly scuffed surface to stick to. if you mirror your primer, paint is just gonna run off everywhere and be a nightmare.

spray your base coats, however many you needed to get coverage, do not sand any base coats. apply your clear. bam. done.

 

[R-X-R]

wow, this is awesome stuff.,.,nice mask

 

[Valk]

Too bad I'm having trouble finishing up. Might have to sand it down to the factory base again =(

 

[HKPRO5]

Sub Awesome thread.

 

[Valk]

Trying to dry coat it now hopeing I cleared up
and wrinkles. Hope I have enough yellow lol.

 

[Valk]

Yay basecoat is laying right though it's taking like 50 mist coats. Lol

 

[Valk]

alright. so earlier on i mentioned you shouldnt mix and match products if you can avoid it. the best guess i have to why i had some many issues is the duplicolor primer i tried to use to touch up sanded through areas was either, not compatible with the base coat i was using, was applied to thinly where appling a thicker base coat over top caused it to peel, or there was contamination.

since the wrinkles didnt happen over everywhere i applied primer... dunno.. but i sanded it all down as low as i could without hitting black and used a technique called dry spraying to try to build up the base coat with the extra wrong color yellow i had.

i still got wrinkles, but after a few misty coats, i sanded a little more, applied more dry coats and eventually equalized the wrinkling effect.

followed the same process until i covered the entire part with the CORRECT color which i didn't have very much of left.. so it being all yellow at least made it easier to tint it to the right color.

sucky thing is, the more you spray, the higher the chance of getting some little s*** in your base coat...
which is a real pissoff...

I COOOOULD have sanded this out and applied more base coat over top, but i ran out covering the part and didnt really feel like buying another $50 can..

Ill stick a forum decal there or somthing lol...


but long story short. part is all painted now. hope its the right color...

Ive been looking at various yellow for a week and a half now...

 

[Valk]

not too bad. a little lighter than the bumper but i can live with it. more pics to come during the day. =)

 

[mspeedP5]

Nice work Nick! You want to do my frankenfenders...? ;-)

 

[Valk]

Paint them? or bondo them up and paint them? I could help you im sure How about a pearl midcoat mark
could give you msp yellow for pretty cheap.

 

[dxaveP5]

pretty cool.

 

[mspeedP5]

Paint them? or bondo them up and paint them? I could help you im sure How about a pearl midcoat mark
could give you msp yellow for pretty cheap.

I'll get in touch with you when I'm heading down that way again.

 

[Valk]

That would be sweet. Also need to get a ride on your coilovers on full soft. Need to replace all four struts soon and might go bc coils instead but need a forgiving daily ride.

 

[mspeedP5]

That would be sweet. Also need to get a ride on your coilovers on full soft. Need to replace all four struts soon and might go bc coils instead but need a forgiving daily ride.

On full soft they are very streetable.

 

[Silverspeed2015]

you matched the paint better than both yellow msp's i looked at when i was looking to buy one, they looked noticeably different shades where yours looks pretty close

 

[Valk]

its not a nice color to try and match cause the make up of the basecoat and the pearl can be different and throw you for a loop. what looks good in one light is completely f'd in another heh..
we had to custom mix the paint and it has like 1/10th the amount of orange in it the recipe called for.

i was gonna take my rear lip off to refinish it too since i scraped it, but ill pass. i had the bumper painted a year ago and i doubt the color on it will match. where i backed into that log doesnt match.. looked good the day i picked it up which was overcast, of course in direct sunlight, its noticably dark and you can follow that to where he blended.

pearls are really unpleasant to match.
next stemp in a few years is to paint the entire car, and keep the dupont recipe in my wallet.