Slapping a coat of paint on something is easy right? It definitely can be but doing it correctly, so the finish looks great and lasts, takes more work than just shaking a can and spraying to your heart’s desire. Correct prep, application and finishing can be the difference between a decent job and a show winning one. Follow along as we start the process of cleaning up our 20-year old F250 using a custom body color matched painting kit from Automotive Touchup.
We’ve had the old Project 600hp 7.3 for 19 years now and the paint is starting to show its age. Early on in the trucks life the emblems were painted to match the body. The job wasn’t really done right and the chipped paint is evidence of that.
The Automotive Touchup kit came with primer, basecoat color matched to our trucks original paint, as well as clear coat. The first thing we laid down was the primer. The included Aerosol Spray Can Trigger made the whole process much easier. When painting make sure to spray from multiple angles and from about a foot away to ensure full coverage. Also don’t put down one massive coat, primer, paint and clear should all be applied using several coats.
Rather than repaint the old emblems, we decided to update them to the 2005+ versions. Prepping the surface to be painted is actually a much larger and important part of a good paint job than the physical act of laying the paint down. Our emblems have a smooth shiny finish, this finish will be hard for the new paint to adhere to. So we first scuffed it up just a bit with some scotchbrite. If we were painting a used fender for example, we would have sanded the entire surface with multiple grits of sandpaper until we had a nice and even surface. Our kit from Automotive Touchup included the sandpaper needed to do just that.
After several light coats the last final coat needs to be laid down a little heavier than the prior. This wet coat helps give the surface a nice smooth finish. The trick here is to spray a thick coat, but not so thick that the paint runs.
After three coats of primer and some time to let the primer dry, it was time for some basecolor. Again, just like with the primer, the first coat of base color was just a dusting.
Once the surface was to our liking, we cleaned it up with Automotive Touchup’s Prep Solvent. The solvent removes contaminants such as wax, grease, bondo powder or a slew of other things that would ultimately mess up the finish. Automotive Touchup’s Prep Solvent also helps with paint adhesion.
Once clean we noticed an area under an emblem that was missing paint. So, we decided to cover it with some paint to fight off rust. Using the pre-taped masking film Automotive Touchup provided us we masked off the area, cleaned up the surface and painted the area just like we sprayed the emblems.
Last step, reinstallation via a bit of 2-sided foam tape. All said and done the paint from Automotive Touchup perfectly matched out the Ford’s factory paint, and we’re really impressed with everything provided with the kit. It had everything we needed to get the job done, the right way.
With the emblems painted we turned our attention to prepping the fender and door for their reinstallation. An eraser wheel was used to remove the glue.
After letting the Basecolor set up and dry completely we started to spray some clear. We ended up spraying three coats plus one wet coat.