Fixin' a fender-bender

[monty]

Hey Josh, there are a few things that could of been the issue.

Properly cleaning is very important.

Putting on primer too wet and putting heat directly to it too close will cause it to wrinkle.

If you have a feather edge (the edge of the old paint) and pile primer on it it will also wrinkle some times. Older paints will sometimes react with newer paints, epoxy's, acrylic urethanes, ect. The key with older paint is to not put the first 1 or 2 coats of primers/sealers on wet. You want to do it dry to kind of create a bridge then go ahead and put the next 2 or 3 coats on medium wet. The time between each coat is very important too, there needs to be enough time for the solvents to evaporate out. If you put 4 heavy wet coats on back to back it takes that much longer for that 1st coat to properly dry if at all.

Also primer isnt made for filling dents, even little one's. Icing is made for little ones. Primer is simply for smoothing.

If you were closer I would fix this for you.

[Jand3rson]

I thought I cleaned it pretty well, I used pretty diluted super clean, but something just didn't sit well. It only did it in the spots where I sanded the paint down to get rid of chips and bad spots, it must have been something in the old paint/primer.

I just dropped the fender off at the powdercoaters, they also do media blasting, so they're just going to strip the whole thing down for me, only costing me $20.

[e30this]

Did you wipe the fender down with de greaser before you sprayed the primer??
I started body work on my car last week. I took all the panels down to bare metal, sanded with 180 before I layed my evercoat z-grip and I noticed in some spots it didnt stick like there was an oil on the metal or something.

[Ray Smoodiver]

Did you add yourself to the list :p

[Jand3rson]

Well, the SEM primer was a bust. Not long after I posted that, the primer reacted to some of the old existing primer/paint on the fender in the bad spots I'd sanded out. It wrinkled up, and didn't dry correctly, and when I tried to sand it out, it just started crumbling up like not-quite-dried-bondo. Not sure what the problem was, it was probably just something in the old paint/primer that wasn't compatible and reacted. I'm going to take it down tomorrow and just have it media blasted and start from scratch.

[BeirBrennerE30]

that looks really good. I woudl always prefer a numbers matching properly repaired fender over a "DOT R" fender anyday.

[SamE30e]

Who stops at a yellow light?

But looks like it's coming along for sure. I need to learn how to do some body work, maybe fix that thing I call a passenger door.

[Jand3rson]

Just picked up a can of black SEM high build primer, and did the first coat. I'll always stand behind SEM's products, the adhesion and how well it goes on is amazing. After a few coats, I'll get a few pics. This stuff should be more than enough to build up the low spots and get it pretty damn close to perfect again.

[IRON-E]

sigh... I too have recently gotten into a small fender bender. Instead of fixing it I headed to our locale yard and picked up a hood and fender on the cheap. Anyways nice work on the fender.

shame, shame, shame you could have been out for the drive tomorrow. :finger:

[E30_Pare]

sigh... I too have recently gotten into a small fender bender. Instead of fixing it I headed to our locale yard and picked up a hood and fender on the cheap. Anyways nice work on the fender.

[Kristeun]

My passenger fender looks almost exactly the same as yours did. Wish I knew how the mend it :(

[Desaevious]

I also had a bitch finding a late model bumper. I waited a year until a parts yard finally got one in and I pounced at it. Shipping is a real bitch on these but luckily I managed to score one at at parts yard for $80. Like I did, you could do a DYI to "patch it up" until you find one. The epoxy idea E30this suggest is a good one too, but I already had tigerhair material laying around.

[Jand3rson]

I haven't bought one yet, I'm kind of holding out to see if the U-Pull-It gets a late model in. Shipping on one of those would be a bitch, and it will be hard to find someone that is selling just the skin. So I'm either going to fix it or get one that way, we'll see what happens. I would just drive up and get one from Joe, but I still owe him money for something else, so that wouldn't be too cool of me until I pay him.

[e30this]

Looks really good, If you didnt already buy a bumper skin. I used a 3M 2 part epoxy to fix a crack/missing piece in my rear bumper and it worked great.
I can get you the info if you want.

[Jand3rson]

I MIGHT try to fix that bumper cover the way you suggested, or another way. I have a book I bought on how to repair plastic bodywork, so maybe I'll crack that guy open.

My fender had not been repainted before however, this is the first time it's had any repairs or anything like that.