Interesting info on your Mini Octaneguy.

I am interested on the repainting of the bonnet because of the bug and paint chip damage. I would like to eventually have this done to my mini. When you did this did you have to respray the entire bonnet? I noticed that you only had primer on the front of the bonnet. Is it possible to not have to repaint the entire bonnet and blend it in?

Lastly, what price range would a good paint guy charge to do this and how durable would the paint be compared to factory finish?

Thanks,
K

 

Oh, also... did you just not worry about bug damage on the bumper?

 

There is no paint harder than factory paint, so any respray will be different. Both the rear quarter panel and the bonnet were "blended"--they weren't sprayed entirely. The primer and sealer on the front was because that area was sanded down to metal to fix the bug and tire fragment impact.

I didn't do the front bumper because I needed to drive my car after it was painted. The car was sanded and prepped one day, I drove it home. The next morning it should have been sprayed, but due to a scheduling problem, it didn't get sprayed until later afternoon. The paint guy said it would be hard enough to drive in a few hours, but what he didn't tell me was that it wouldn't be hard enough to reassemble the headlights! So I ended up leaving it overnight--had I known that, I would have resprayed the bumper as well.

I saved on costs by doing the prep work, disassembly and reassembly and finishing work myself.

The painter who painted my car was actually fired shortly after he painted my car. I found out how to identify what is considered a lousy paint job through this experience. I'm actually waiting for it to be repainted.

Here are some tips.

After it's painted and delivered, look for fish eyes--little craters. I'm told these are caused by water in the lines. There shouldn't be any, because to fix them, you need to add paint--they can't be sanded out. I've got 12 of them!



Also look for shrinkage along primer lines. You can actually see the line where the primer ends. In this picture, towards the right of center, you can see how the light reflection gets kind of fuzzy going down. That's the primer line being seen through the paint. It's visible from certain angles more than others.




Other things to look for are orange peel and bad sanding. I don't have pictures of this, because I did the finishing work and it was to my satisfaction. But a lot of bad paint jobs are made worse because after painting, it was sanded with a coarse grit, and left there--so you can see long straight scratches in the paint. If those sanding marks aren't properly buffed out, the finish will be foggy or hazy instead of crisp and sharp. Also it will likely be all swirly. You can always tell a poor paint job from a good one by how it reflects light.

Another way is to look at body seams and removable parts. Like the Aerogrill was removed, but a cheap place might leave it in place and just mask around it leaving an edge that will eventually peel up.

When painting, depending on how much hardener is put into the paint, each coat can dry in 30 minutes to a couple of hours. Not putting the proper ratio of hardener can prevent the paint from ever hardening--that happened on my rear quarter panel discovered when I tried polishing the paint. I thought I had made a mistake, but was later told that the paint was lacking hardener.

My shop has a new painter who is much better. The old painter was an Italian guy with 40 years of experience, but despite how good he thought he was, his work didn't show it. The new painter actually communicates with me how things are painted and why so I can choose my polishing/sanding methods more easily.

You can expect to pay $300-$500 to respray the bonnet. For me it was substantially less, pretty much the cost of the paint since the majority of the work was done by me.

Right now, I'm waiting for the time to have my paint resprayed. I hope to have it done before MITM--but that means I have to disassemble everything all over again--although it wil be less scary since I've already done it once.

Richard

 

Wow, that little dent is something crazy. Is that something that shows up immediately? Or does it take a little drying/curing time before it's really noticible?

 

Those fisheyes are shown immediately after it's dried. They are very visible while wetsanding. Sometimes a few fisheyes maybe "acceptable" but more than a few is bad. Other paint shops won't tolerate any fish eyes, so it depends on the shop.

As you can see from my photos, these are defects that aren't noticeable from a few feet away, but up close at the right angle you can see them.

Richard