LEARN Professional Car Painting: How to Body Work, Sand and Primer Your Vehicle for Paint, Episode 2

Let's get locked in and loaded as we completely disassemble our color change RSX in episode number two. We are going to get this car completely stripped down to the bare bones so we can do a full prep on the vehicle. Get your notepads out because in this key episode we're going to teach you everything from body filler to existing repairs and grinding out those old repairs. We'll also show you how to level up your metal game using some basic metal tools in your own home garage. We'll also dive right into the initial sanding of your vehicle as well as sanding body filler. We'll also talk about different types of primers, epoxy primers, surface primers, all the primers you're going to need to get your vehicle all primed up when it comes to getting the best possible finish. And we're not stopping there. We're going to show you how to prepare that primer for paint not once but twice. We're going to prime this car in two different types of primers. We're going to show you what you need to get the best possible outcome whether you're professional or in your own home garage. Step one, sanding old paint and body work. We're now ready for the stage of doing the blocking and the body work. Let's talk about how we are going to do it so we don't get lost within our space and our dents. What we already did is we marked off very very minor little waves that will require a little bit of filler. Now if we go to sand the whole entire body we're going to lose track of where these little dents are. Believe it or not when it's dull you cannot see them. And over in this area there was previous body work done. When I first bought the car I had noticed it. So we'll be sanding this down and maybe giving it a skim coat of a little bit of filler. We're going to be talking about the fillers and the primers that we're going to be using on the vehicle. On this side very similar waves that don't require any pulling of the metal just a little bit of body filler. So let's talk about the sanding process now and the filling process before we block the whole entire vehicle down. So some of the things we're going to be using for this minor process of filling is 3m plus a finishing glaze. I really like this. It's a very thin body filler and we're going to be using 180 grit on a small block. So basically all we're really going to do is we're going to sand it and we don't need to go down the metal anymore. We're going to be using the actual finish here roughed up with 180 grit. And believe it or not most fillers now like that 3m glaze they're designed they can go right over a nice sand scratch just like this. Now you can see once we start to sand it you cannot identify where the dent was. So if you lose it I'm going to show you a quick and easy way to identify where it's going to be. You can use just a little bit of guide coat or black paint put it over there then when we go to sand this it's going to show the low spots in the finish. And it's very very minor but we can see a little bit of a low spot here and a little bit of a low spot over in this area. So we're going to go ahead and we're just going to swipe this whole area and the filler will remain in that area. And then we'll take it and do the same thing to all the different spots we've identified. And over on the other side it seems like we have similar dents in the similar area on either side of the car. So we'll go ahead and give those a nice little sand before we put our glazing putty. Now for mixing up our glaze we don't need a lot. So all you're going to do for the hardener is you're going to take the hardener and you're going to knead it a little bit to make sure that all of the hardener is nicely mixed. And all we're going to do is go from the middle make a line out and this is the way I like to mix this stuff. So you make a circle out of it and just about doesn't need to be a perfect mix from the middle out just a little bit more. And if you don't have enough it won't hardly harden properly. If you have too much it can crack. So from here we're going to have our spreader and we're going to mix it and like the way we like to mix it is by folding itself on top of itself. That way we can get less air bubbles for mixing on a mixing palette. This has tear-off sheets nice and smooth not cardboard so it's not introducing any sort of porousness or pinholes into the actual filler itself. You can see if you spread it look how smooth it is. Spreads nice and smooth and once we don't see any more of these streaks and that's why we flip it on and over again that's when it's ready to go. We're ready to apply it to the car now. You're going to want to work a little bit quick because this stuff is going to kick in just about a minute, minute and a half depending on the temperature. So we're going to put it on and don't concern yourself getting it on amazingly perfect because you want to get it on before it dries. So he'll get it on here we'll put everything on first and then we can come back and if we have a little time smooth it out. Granted you do want it to come out good but you don't want to start putting it on and it's drying so keep it moving again about a good 30 to 45 seconds depending on your temperature here in the Florida weather this stuff can quick very quickly. Now while that dries we can get ready for our next mix simply by taking this tear-off sheet and giving us a fresh new sheet so we are ready to go. Now we're going to be using 180 again and it's all been dry for about a good 10-15 minutes here and we don't need 80 because this is such a thin filler. We're only going to be using a block. The block is the way to go because it's flat and straight and we want our body work to be flat and straight so we're going to be using a block when it comes to initially blocking out the surface and then later when we want to refine the scratch we can move on to a sander like a DA sander or something like that but we're not blocking or doing any blocking work using any of the round sanders. You can see here when we're going to be done that you should be leaving some of the filler in some of those low spots so about 90 percent of that filler will be gone. The same thing here with the other side we can see we didn't get enough filler on it in our dent area but we're still going to sand what we got on there and then we can go back and reapply wherever we might have it. You can see where it's staying right in the low spots and this is so so so thin maybe only a an eighth of an inch that's all we really need to get removing these small ripple dents. Now when it comes to blocking you can see there's some issues here with the flat block getting into this contour so we're using a 3M blocking kit and Juan will show you that it just sands better in this little curve here so all different types of blocks for all different types of reasons and I'll put the link in the description for this kit. We really like the 3M kit it's a hook kit I mean velcro kit that works very well. Now after we sand it we can see it stayed in some of the low spots now this is a side we didn't get the finish up yet so Juan's going to go ahead and give it a swipe right here and it's fine to go over things a couple two or three times until you get it right. Majority of this stuff is just going to sand off anyway so you're not necessarily building it up so get it on going one direction and then he'll give it a swipe going the other direction so it's nice and smooth and it doesn't have any of those ridges in the filler and that's all there is to it. And after inspecting some of the doors we found some minor dents so same process again 180 flatten it out and then Juan is going to use a little bit of glaze he'll use the glaze and he'll put it into the door like he did already here and then go ahead and cut that flat and this is the process you'll follow before you do the initial blocking of the vehicle. And after some filler it's ready for again the dry time and sanding and then the blocking process is the same exact way as the vehicle we're going to use 180 it might take a little bit more time but this will block it flat all you really need for glaze is 180 grit. And now we're going to work on the area over here this again I think like there was a repair in this area because I saw on the inside of the car some weld marks and I noticed the pearl was a little bit more concentrated in this area and I noticed that it was just a little bit wonky so we're going to block this out by hand first we're going to see what we got and most likely we're going to put a little swipe of glaze here block all that out so we have a nice filler something that primer will not necessarily do. And again your first thing you should be doing always you should always be touching the actual panel with a block if you're doing any sort of restoration or any sort of paint job that's going to require some body work you're going to want to block it out first that's the best thing you can do when it comes to sanding and preparing your car now if you're using 180 you're going to have to prime it you're not going to be able to block out with 320 initially that's really not going to cut really too much I like 180 because it's aggressive but not too coarse enough to relieve too heavy of scratch in the actual panel itself so use that 180 here and this was the main concern I had this is the only panel on the whole entire vehicle that's been resprayed I can tell just by looking at it and once we started to sand we had some filler which is fine but we want to make sure that there's no rust on the metal here so we're going to keep on sanding we can see the edge of where the primer is it's kind of like a brownish primer it seems to be coming around here and possibly around here we're going to probably most likely sand it all off and see what kind of metal we have under here it looks solid enough but let's take it down a little bit more and then make that final judgment call and these are the things we're going to run into yeah it's got filler on it the filler looks like it's over the paint here and then it's over the metal here the bodywork's not horrible there's a couple little high spots here I think the best thing for me to do let's remove all the filler let's sand this all down and let's put epoxy down first that's going to protect the metal then from there we can do our bodywork over that make sure everything's nice to protect it we don't want to do this whole paint job and then a few months later we start to have a little bit of rust coming through bubbling up we can have reassurance knowing we're doing it the proper way by getting rid of this filler and again on the rest of the vehicle I've inspected it thoroughly and it is an original paint job the only thing that we have repainted on this vehicle is right here in the quarter panel so we're going to be using the SCT from Eastwood the reason why I wanted to use it is because I had noticed just a little bit of rust here on the metal and I'm not confident that without doing this whole removal of this filler and everything here that I can paint this and feel good about it so I'm going to remove everything if you come in closer you can see just a lot of pinholes in the filler I think the metal is decent the metal feels decent but I really feel like we can redo that filler here and this obviously makes really quick work of the metal now we know at this point hey there's no rust we can finish this off with a 180 we're going to epoxy prime it and then from there we can do our body work it might need a little bit of hammer and dolly first to knock down some highs but I'm really happy with the way it looks once we got everything sanded down we realized that hey this bodywork metal was not ready for filler it's a good thing we took everything down we can see we already started to pull the metal a little bit to make sure it was working we're using the pro spot by vivore and it's a very simple system to get the metal out but first what we're going to be using is this little body line tool so we can make a line to see where we need to pull this body line out from very simple so come here we'll tighten it up where it should line up and all we're going to do is focus on pulling out that body line just a little bit we don't want to over pull it now we're using the triangle attachment at the end of this den puller and this puts a very very fine weld onto the panel and you're doing just small weld pulls on the metal we're actually using that body line tool and we're wanting to pull out the actual high spot of that body line so when it comes to doing the filler it's going to be a lot easier to do that filler and we're not making the actual body line out of body filler we want that metal backing as close as we can get to the actual oem spec it will never be perfect that's why the body filler will come in there and smooth things out now after everything's all been pulled out you can use a 80 grit rollock disc and then 180 grit on a standard and here's the metal work after it's been done we did it to the best of our ability you see there's no more of those high pull marks and we restored the body line so at this point you have two options body filler right over this but if you want a longer lasting repair do your body work over epoxy we're going to put epoxy down here we're going to let it cure for 48 hours and then we can do our body work over there we're going to be using the eastwood epoxy and what i like about the eastwood epoxy is you can put it over body filler so there's a couple spots here that are down the metal as well as the other side we're going to epoxy these now we're ready for the initial blocking and we're going to be using this air file now this is only really on older vehicles that you want super flat we're going to go at it now these quarter panels they look pretty straight but i want to make sure they're super straight believe it or not the doors are really nice but i want the quarter panels they have some things here and there to be flat so we're going to go at it first with this with 180 and then from there we can do more blocking into the process of refinishing this is the epoxy primer we're going to be using for the metal this is the eastwood it's a one-to-one it's direct the metal and also can go over some body filler now we'll go ahead put our epoxy we're going to do two coats on the epoxy i like to wait a couple days because it takes a very long time to dry we're using 180 grit to give it a scuff the metal is protected but we need to bite in the epoxy so we're going to be using a maroon scuff pad to get into all those low areas next up we're going to be using a body filler now i like the 3m platinum plus body filler it's a very good filler it spreads smooth it sands very well and has a good fill earlier in the video we used the glaze for very very minor shallow shallow areas now this is a little bit more of a fill needed so this is why we'll be using a thicker body filler our initial cut will be with a p80 grit to really shape it just a little bit sometimes that p180 will not shape this rough of a body filler the glaze it can handle but not this we're going to use tape again on our body edge so that way when we apply the glaze the last step always finishing with glaze we can get that nice crisp body line edge again using our body tool and our body line tool helps to mark off where that body line is and we can always use tape once again to make sure that we're sanding up to the edge we're starting off here with the p180 since it is the glaze and we don't want to sand that with anything more aggressive than the p180 from here we're going to be using a lot of tape on both sides of the body line this actually took a couple days to get right you're seeing it just in a few seconds but don't be afraid to go back add a little bit more filler if you need to to make sure that this is as perfect as possible once everything's block sanded i like to machine sand with a p220 or a p320 a 220 is going to leave a more aggressive scratch but you might have adhesion issues with 320 on the small areas we're going to use a little bit of edge on the burn throughs and then we'll follow up our heavy repairs with a high build primer this high build primer is different from a surfacer primer a high build primer is going to build up so we can block sand and not cut through and have a nice finish for our next step we waited two days for it to cure up so it doesn't shrink anymore and we're going to be blocking it out with a p180 it's important to be aggressive when doing these types of repairs we know we're going to be re-priming it anyways and we really want to shape it we're going to be moving on to the doors now again using the p180 now in a vehicle we use a straight file sander and on the doors you can use the same exact machine but here we really wanted to see what we were doing we know the doors are a big surface area and we wanted to see if we could catch any sort of low spot that we might have missed so sometimes doing it just by hand you can go ahead and tell if you have any areas that might have been a little bit low both methods really do work you just have to make sure you're keeping your eye on what you're doing you can see throughout this video Juan and I really did a lot of work a lot of block sanding you never want to initially hit the vehicle with the sander in fact the only place that we hit the vehicle with the center to begin with would be the roof you'll see we're going to be starting with the same method on every single panel the same exact procedures now this is only if your vehicle is going to get a re-prime if you just want to do a color change on your vehicle you can simply probably just sand it down with 320 and prime it and repaint it but if you're looking for something to be laser straight super smooth and look great going down the road you're gonna have to take some extra steps to get the process down and make sure your vehicle looks good but if you're just doing something simple you can 320 you can use some primer and then from there you can paint once you got that primer all sanded down now here on the roof the roof was immaculate so we just gave it a nice sand with some 220 grit now the most important thing is after you got everything nice and blocked out go ahead and machine finish it with a p220 with a six inch interface step two high build primer when it comes to painting your car there's a ton of different primers on the market and it's hard to choose the right one i like to use a high build primer initially when doing this type of restoration work a high build primer is going to help build up the mills on the surface of the panel so you can block it even straighter you have high build primers and you have surfacer primers nowadays a lot of folks want to market their products as high build primers when they're really not that high of a build so it's very important to do your research i'll leave in a link in the description of a good high build primer there's different types of primers on the market again we're using a high build primer but a surfacer primer will be the last step in the process which fills minor imperfections but sands a little bit smoother lays a little bit smoother and is a better product when getting ready to do your application for paint now the high build primer is going to give you that levelness that you're going to need when it comes to sanding it and you can be a lot more aggressive with it we're going to be hitting up this high build primer again with a p180 and that p180 is going to level it off think of it as a very very very thin glazing filler a glazing filler is very thin and this high build primer we're spraying on is going to do just what we need to level off the surface of the actual vehicle itself we're using the 3m performance spray gun here again with a 2.0 tip and we're applying two wet coats we're going to allow this primer actually dry a good week week and a half we're doing this in the background while working on other jobs so the more that it dries the better it's going to come out now we'll hit it to the booth and we have any areas that are already with metal we're going to use a little bit of etch primer on those areas you could put epoxy on them but for something smaller than a mug you can use a little bit of etch to make sure that it's not going to rust down the road again we're using that high build primary notice in this video that we're priming all in the same session so make sure that you're moving the vehicle along at the same time instead of doing doors one day or one week and priming those try to get everything done in the same time so you're doing the same exact procedures so you don't get lost within your project there's a lot of working parts with your project and you want to follow the same exact procedures so each and every panel gets the same exact attention that way when the vehicle is all bolted down together it's going to look the same and yes it is true if you don't have the same undercoats on all the same parts of the vehicle you might have a little bit of a difference when it comes to the look of the vehicle so following those same procedures watching some paint society to get those procedures down it's definitely going to help out when it comes to your project step three block sanding primer before every step it's important to use a spray on or dry guide coat it's very important that way we can make sure we're removing all necessary scratches and i'm going to focus here on a few areas basically between the two body lines here we're going to work this area and we're always sanding at a 45 between these two body lines so we're going to sand in a cross hatch pattern and you're going to see this on all the panels that we do we'll start off in like a 45 degree always sanding at a 45 towards the body line we don't necessarily sand with the body line we sand against the grain i like to call it so sanding against the grain here and we're sanding until we see that there's no guide coat left and that's the biggest thing is how do we know when to be done sanding well when you don't see any low spots or guide coat or anything like that then we know we're good and usually we're going to be probably good in this final stage but we don't want to overlook anything just because we want to get the car painted if we see something's important to go back maybe put a little bit of glaze filler like bring up a low spot or just keep sanding on it until it goes away now we'll come over to our other side and basically we're going to work it in the same fashion and what this helps to do is create a very even sanding finish and it instead of focusing on the whole area we're focusing on a small area at a time so we can connect this area this area and this area all back together and over here on our body line we're going to take from this body line to this arch that we made here and we don't need to the tape here but we're going to be sanding starting at the end of the panel all the way up to that body line here that we made so we're just sanding here you see that line looks very good that we were able to make and we don't want to stand here and then over because we're going to round it off too much this is a thick primer and since it's a thick primer you can start to make some body lines and don't be scared this is 180 grit you might go through to the white underneath but that's okay we've got one last coat of primer that we're going to be putting on this as we start to get to our larger areas we're going to take body line to body line which we have here and then we're going to stretch it out doing longer strokes still doing that x pattern we're going to come across on the other way and we're going to sand against the grain doing that x pattern to create the smoothest and the flattest look when the car is all painted now in this area over here there's still some low spots so we can take our block and we're going to sand them and just see if they go away if not we would add a little bit of filler but i just think it's in a wonky tight spot so the block needs a little bit more tension in this area it's telling me sand here i'm not completely flat yet and that's just what we'll do there we go check that out that's nice then we can come over here and flatten this straight just like that and then that's good over here i'm going to use a skinnier block to get into these contours and do the same thing blocking it at a 45 degree angle we want all of the car to be nice and flat 45 one way 45 the other way and then some areas will just be flat straight sanding and with this all blocked out let's go over to the other side and speed things up and get that blocked out as well as the roof in this point in the process we've got everything completely all blocked out now we want to refine the 180 grit scratch with a da this is the first time really that the da is touching the vehicle only for refinement because we don't want that grit scratch to be absorbed by the new primer we want to make sure we have something finer you can bounce between 220 and 320 but i'm going to choose 220 here so it will effectively remove that 180 grit sand scratch which is exactly what we have here so again we're just using this dust on spray this stuff will come right off doesn't even worry about the wheel because it's literally just dust that goes on now i'm going to show you this up close before we get in supersonic speed basically all we want to do is remove the guide coat we don't need to do any sort of fancy sanding it's just a refinement you don't want to push too hard because the 220 will still just have a little bit of shaping to it you can shape with the 220 and you don't want to shape with the 220 so you basically just want to go over the surface if you're a little bit scared about being too aggressive with it then you can go to 320 but again we don't want down the road for us to see 180 grit sand scratch that's why we're refining it with 220 and then if you wanted to you could move the 320 but i think this will be just fair for what we have going on here today and that same process over on the roof again that 220 step four primer surfacer well everything is all scuffed up and it's ready for its final prime why do we need to reprime could we just seal over this and paint probably could but we really want this to come out perfect so what we're going to be doing is we're going to be putting one final coat of primer on there that we really don't need to get too aggressive with and you can see that this primer took a real beating it's got a lot of cut throughs to 180 and that is a good thing you see over here on the roof we see that we've really blocked it out and you're going to have those cut throughs and those burn throughs and if you didn't do that then you might not have a good enough blocking to the panel itself but what we're going to be doing here is we're going to be going over it with a blue primer now a blue color build primer is not something you need to do but it's going to help us with our coverage since we're doing color change but for you guys just doing the same exact primer will be just fine because the reason why is you're not going to block out that final primer since all the blocking has already been done all you'll be doing is going over it with a da sander and maybe about 500 grit or 400 grit and that's going to yield a much smoother finish and it's going to help make sure that you don't have any sand scratches in the finish since that primer is only really going to be sanded with a da sander and that's exactly what we're going to do so let's go ahead and get this thing into the booth and get it primed up all right and it's all masked up and she is ready to get in primer we're going to be using the color build primer we're going with this color and using the color build different toners you can basically make whatever color you want to help when it comes to that color covering so my whole thought process is we're going to put this blue on as primer you can mix it as primer we'll sand it down lightly with like a 500 grit and then we'll go from there we'll do one coat of sealer and that will cover in one coat easy since it's blue very transparent and then we can only probably get away with two coats on everything else of the blue less time in the booth yields a cleaner finish so we're going to put this down first on the vehicle and then we're going to follow the same process on all the other parts of the vehicle now this is color build and it's actually marketed as a high build primer but it's really not it does not really build and actually one of the additives that goes into the actual color build primer is a surfacer hardener so some of these brands are going to market themselves as high build primers because it sounds better this color build is a thinner primer it sands super smooth it goes on smooth and i love it as a primer surfacer a lot of you folks can go ahead and just skip the high build if you just want to color change your vehicle if you have a light light damage you can use the actual primer surfacer instead and that will work just fine now this color build is nothing like i've ever seen before you've got so many colors that you can use to get the tone right so when it comes to actually putting down the base coat later on we can use the same exact color but mix it as a sealer just makes us different with different additives and that means it's going to go on a little bit smoother and you don't sand it so we'll put on one more coat once this is all sanded in the next episode and then we can probably just apply two coats of blue base you know blue is very transparent so getting out of it in just two coats is really going to be beneficial to the vehicle we're not putting a lot a lot of paint and saving a little bit of material while we're at it you can see how awesome this stuff really just goes on we're going to be applying two coats of this primer surfacer and again your primer surfacer is not going to be blue if you want to get color build it's going to be a tough because it's super expensive because basically it comes in about let's say six different toners that you have to buy in order to make these colors and a paint store is not going to mix it up for you it's just not what they're going to do you have to buy the actual whole system but it works good for an auto body shop just like what we have here going on and guys if you're finding out the information to be really beneficial go ahead and pick up a paint suit from the description that is a colad paint suit with the paint society logos on it and all the products you find in the actual description are what is used in the video now for the sandpapers i will be linking the eagle abrasive sandpapers is a much better option than the 3m a little bit cheaper to help you all out when it comes to your own home project now getting back to the actual vehicle you can see again we are doing everything together as i told you earlier with the primer stages we've sanded everything together and now we're hitting up all of the color build areas see how awesome we can get this blue primer in all of the tough areas and when it comes to actually painting later on we're going to get out of this really quick about 90 of the work that we're doing on this vehicle is going to be the preparation we've been working about three months on this vehicle and when it comes down to painting it's only going to be about a day and a half worth of painting it's so important to get this prep stage properly done and it's something that you can all do just by watching these simple videos and applying the knowledge that you're learning in the video right on your own project you don't need a fancy booth to do any of this type of work a lot of it is just really labor and knowledge of knowing what procedures and what comes next and what grits to use and contain all that knowledge simply just by watching all of these videos and on next episode it is officially paint day we're going to show you how to take that blue surfacer primer and give it the final blocking that it's going to need to get ready for the final coat of paint we're going to do a complete overhaul of our paint booth to get the best possible outcome using like 90 products as we go ahead and sand it down and apply a peelable coating to the whole entire booth you're not going to want to miss when we pop the lid on this vivid blue paint and restore this rsx back to its factory color on the next episode of paint society