small repair; plus tried to buff - left swirls

[my_4th_girl]

First post following my introduction post. Love Meguiar's products.

My project:

2004 Porsche Boxster S - black exterior
The garage left it under a tree - drops of sap. I'm a handyman, but car finishes are apparently not my thing. I tried a lot of stuff, and ended up using a rubbing compound. I must have missed a "grit step" because I now have swirls. They look to not be too deep.

[IMG]e:\pictures\02.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]e:\pictures\03.jpg[/IMG]

Since I'm going to do something to get the swirls out, I have a bunch of chips that I thought I could tackle in the process.

[IMG]e:\pictures\01.jpg[/IMG]

Finally, I have a 4 x 4 area above the front fender where someone backed into it and dented it. The guy I bought it from tried to pull the dent and left a wavy 4X4 area with a few paint creases and small puncture marks where he tried to pop it out from the inside.

[IMG]e:\pictures\04.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]e:\pictures\05.jpg[/IMG]

The "matchless autobody" quote for just the fender repair is $700, and I also need a good wetsanding or something done to the outside to restore the showroom shine.

I love learning new things and I'm thinking of tackling this myself. I have just about every tool known to man with the exception of an orbital sander. I do have a 14" craftsman buffer/waxer that I use to wax and polish my cars.

First: I've done body work before on cars, but not high-end like my Porsche. Should I just take it in and have the dent in the fender done by professionals? Would I use a 300 grit followed by a Bondo application, primer, #3000, paint, clearcoat? Should I then worry about doing just the paint?

Second: If I do the paint chips and swirls, I need some advice as to the process and tools. I've read the forums and it looks like I should try a small area using M105 or #3000, followed by ???? Do I need to buy a rotary tool, or can I use my craftsman polisher or a drill with attachments?

Thanks much!

[Markus Kleis]

Re: small repair; plus tried to buff - left swirls

First of all, welcome to MOL!

As for your pictures, when you post pictures on the internet you need to actually host the pictures on an online site before you can post them.

Meguiar's actually lets you upload and host your pictures for free!

Here's the link: Uploading and Posting Pictures

Mark

[Mike Phillips]

Re: small repair; plus tried to buff - left swirls

Wow! You're talking about tackling a lot of different types of problems that's great and we love your passion but for each of the different types of projects you listed below you'll get MUCH better replies is you start a thread for each project instead of putting them all in one thread. It's so diverse that it will make people not want to reply because it's too much work to reply. This is why we wrote this and placed it on the forum homepage.

See the second link,

Friendly Tips...
How to write a great subject for your message!
The Number 3 - Try to limit the number of questions in a single message to three...



That said, I'll take a stab at answering some of your questions,

2004 Porsche Boxster S - black exterior
The garage left it under a tree - drops of sap. I'm a handyman, but car finishes are apparently not my thing. I tried a lot of stuff, and ended up using a rubbing compound. I must have missed a "grit step" because I now have swirls. They look to not be too deep.

What specifically did you use? The damage can be undone but not with an old fashioned orbital buffer.

Since I'm going to do something to get the swirls out, I have a bunch of chips that I thought I could tackle in the process.

Chip repair is difficult only because most people want the finished results to look like there were never any chips and like no one ever worked on the area and it's a lot more difficult to do than most people think,

Check out the threads in the below link as this is a popular topic so all the threads have been tagged with chip repair.

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/tags.php?tag=Touch-up+Rock-chip

The "matchless autobody" quote for just the fender repair is $700, and I also need a good wetsanding or something done to the outside to restore the showroom shine.

I love learning new things and I'm thinking of tackling this myself. I have just about every tool known to man with the exception of an orbital sander. I do have a 14" craftsman buffer/waxer that I use to wax and polish my cars.

Orbital buffers like the one you have are only good for spreading out a layer of wax, not remove defects whether they be swirls, scratches or sanding marks. If fact your hand has more power to remove defects out of a clear coat finish than an orbital buffer. Again, see the threads listed in the link below because they're tagged with the word exert which will explain everything.

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/tags.php?tag=exert

First: I've done body work before on cars, but not high-end like my Porsche. Should I just take it in and have the dent in the fender done by professionals? Would I use a 300 grit followed by a Bondo application, primer, #3000, paint, clearcoat? Should I then worry about doing just the paint?

Second: If I do the paint chips and swirls, I need some advice as to the process and tools. I've read the forums and it looks like I should try a small area using M105 or #3000, followed by ???? Do I need to buy a rotary tool, or can I use my craftsman polisher or a drill with attachments?

Thanks much!

As for doing body work, might want to join a forum for do-it-yourself painting to learn more about this topic because it's a little more complicated when it comes to basecoat/clearcoat paint systems.

[my_4th_girl]

Re: small repair; plus tried to buff - left swirls

Thanks Mark. I'm going to try to upload the pics.

[my_4th_girl]

Re: small repair; plus tried to buff - left swirls

Mike,
From a newbie, I appreciate the advice and your thoughts. Given the quick response I got to my original message, I plan to separate the projects into tasks and post individually. I'll start with the body work.