try the link, it worked on my miata

 

I can't get that exact product here. I will try clay barring, polishing, and waxing this weekend just to see what it does on the parts of the paint that aren't ruined.

I could probably spring to get just the faded parts painted if the rest of the paint doesn't look too bad.

If I can move my car to a spot across my from my house (it's currently a 15-minute drive away), I might even consider painting it myself.

I found that enough Brilliant Black urethane paint and clear coat (including thinner and hardener) to do the car whole only costs about $200 (unless maybe the paint brand online I found is crap?).

That's a great bit cheaper than the $2000 I expect a professional paint job to cost.

 

Check out Paint Society on Youtube -

https://www.youtube.com/user/nexson

Lots of good info on paint work.

Mind you, you will need a few things to paint your car yourself -

- Good paint gun
- Good air compressor
- LOTS of masking materials
- A clean room of some kind to do the work in

Remember, paint is all in the prep, and it's a LOT of sanding and work to get to the point where you actually spray.

That's where Plastidip is nice, very little prep and you can literally go from car sitting looking like *** to dipped and done in an afternoon. And you can do it outside. For the situation you are in, if the sanding/buffing doesn't bear fruit that may be the easiest and most cost effective way to make the car look nice.

Dale

 

If I can't paint it myself, I might just do the prep work. I'm sure I can work out a deal with the body shop to just spray the car.. But it's hard to pull the trigger on taking a sander to the car when it doesn't look *that* bad to me, outside of a few rough spots.

 

Hate to say it but it won't do anything for the problem he has. If it does, the fillers in the glaze will just mask the issue temporarily.

All the cars in the AG thread are SS paint. Most SS paints become hard and dry over the years. Megs #7 will "condition" SS paint due to the chemicals in it. Whenever I get an old SS car in my hands I take #7 and leave it on the paint over night before I buff it. Makes it much easier to work with.

 

I still haven't polished or sanded the car yet, but I painted the wiper arms!

Do you think the lack of a bumper support is maybe why my bumper is a bit wonky?

I still can't figure out why the gaps between my bumper, hood, light covers, and fenders are so wonky...

 

Well the bumper skin really needs the bumper support beam and those Styrofoam filler pieces underneath to help it hold its shape over time. My FD's previous owner painted my FD maybe a year before I bought it, but he got rid of the bumper beam to fit a FMIC. The bumper fit like crap, and it was starting to distort and had a couple of spider cracks in the new paint from it flexing too much from the lack of support. Shortly after buying the car I went to a SMIC setup (ducted homemade clone of the old M2 Medium kit), and put back the bumper support & Styrofoam bits and the bumper fits much better now and is no longer as flexy/flimsy.

 

My first suspect would be that hood. Even the “quality” aftermarket panels usually required fitment tweaks with compromise. I can’t ID yours other than it’s one of the ‘Mazdaspeed-style’ or Mazdaspeed-like’ versions. And from the pins and stated issues, probably not top of the line.

 

For small spots like that I like to cut the sandpaper into 1"x1" squares. Then I use just the pads of my fingers to carefully wetsand. 1000 grit, 2000 grit, 3000 grit then I finish with Meguiar's 105 and 205 cutting compounds. The area is small enough that you can use the compound by hand and not even have to use a buffer.

 

so the gap is made by having the two pieces the same shape next to each other right? say no and i'll have more coffee and try again, lol
if you take those two pieces and push one in on the side, you're changing the shape of it and then the two won't match up

essentially the bumper being pushed in on one side makes it more of a circle than it should be, and you have a gap. pull the bumper straighter, and the gap will get better

 

It's almost exactly the same as this Stout Type-R hood https://store.shopping.yahoo.co.jp/k...T-FD3S-01.html, except that I only have one small rear vent hole instead of two.　I didn't see any brand markings, though. So it might have been a copy.

I bought the hood and front bumper used from the same car (which I never saw), and I think the bumper was an AutoExe FD-02, but possibly a knockoff. as well.

I also bought the wheels from the car, and years later realized the offset was WAY too wide for an FD with stock fenders, but I sold them and got double what I paid for them. Haha.

 

The hood to fender fitment is only weird because it looks like it has been offset towards the driver's side a bit. But maybe that's just that one of my fenders needing adjustment. The hood actually aligns perfectly with the bumper left to right.
The problem with the light covers to hood / bumper / fender fitment is that the shape's aren't the same! So it's tight at spots and loose at others. At one point, my light covers were actually scraping the bumper.

I think part of it was because I bent the crap out of the fenders by sending the car into a foam crash pad...

I need to take the bumper off, anyway, so I guess I'll have a look at things then.

Of course, it's a 90s Mazda track car, so panel gaps are probably never going to be perfect...