have you ever wanted to BE at the body shop? - Detailing and Car Care Forum

Obviously this isn't my car, but it is someone's I know very well. As a favor I hooked him up with another friend of mine that's a painter. He got a really bad ding in a bad location of his 850 so the fender needed to be repainted.

I didn't have anything to do for half a day so I my friend let me be at the shop with him while he did the work. Now, he was doing this off hours so I've replaced him with ugly stick figures so that in the small possible event someone at his work saw these pictures he wouldn't get fired.

Also note, this was an under the table job, and he's not a bodyman. Taking the fender off the car to do the repair and paint would have been better, but that takes more time and time was at a premium.

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture before he started sanding.

You can see the dent in these two pics. The other spots are just where there were some other smaller rock chips that needed to be smoothed out. If I remember right he's using an orbital sander with 300 grit sandpaper.

Here is where he's filling in the dent with bondo. Bondo was given a bad name over the years, however, today the quality is much higher and often it is stronger than the metal the car is made of.

Once the bondo dries (maybe a minute or two) he sanded it down to make it smooth an applied another layer of bondo.

After several layers of bondo and sanding then everything is sanded smooth to so that no high or low points can be felt.

Here he's taping everything up to get ready for the car to be bagged and then primered.

Here the entire car is bagged to prevent overspray of the primer

Here the section for painting is cut out. The lighting is different here because a very large heat lamp is being pointed at the fender to raise it's temperature. This is done so that the primer will "bite" better. (I'm not 100% sure what that means)

Here was I think the third layer of primer.

After the primer has dried, it needs to be sanded down with 500 grit sand paper to make sure it's smooth and the base coat will "bite" into the primer. In order to make sure it's smooth, something called a guide coat is put on top of the primer. That's the speckle you're seeing.

To do this sanding the surface needs to be wet. This is known as wet-sanding.

The primer is slowly sanded away until it makes a nice smooth surface.

After the primer is sanded down, the entire panel that will be painted is sanded with type of SOS pad (and a strange gel lubricant) and works out to between 1000 and 1200 grit sand paper. This is also done wet.

Here the car is in the paint booth getting taped off again

Here it's put in a new bag. You can see from the suction of the bag on the ground that this is a down draft booth. (Good, high quality and EXPENSIVE)

Since the seals weren't removed for risk of breaking them (remember this guy isn't a bodyman) a special ultra-thin tape was used to make sure no paint would get on them.

Here is the first base coat (color coat) Sorry, but I can't remember what that cloth on the hood was for. I just know he used it to wipe down the panel before it was painted.... maybe to remove static or lint or something like that.

This was after the 2nd or third base coat.

And here it is after several coats of clear. Now the booth will increase the temperature to 150 which will bake the paint and help it cure faster.

the next few hours were very boring (like watching paint dry... oh wait....) so I didn't stay. I'll try to get a picture of the 850 and post it later, but after talking to the owner, he said the car looks better than when he bought it (the entire car was buffed to remove all swirl marks and such.)

Matt Atkins
Vice President
Seattle5s
98' 540i-6 blk/blk
94' Pathfinder Green/gray