How to Repair Damaged Clear Coat - Auto Body Repair Hacks Revealed

hey folks today I'm going to answer an age-old question that has been asked by oh so many car owners hey man can you hold on a minute I got a question for you I got some very quick peeling just on top of this panel and just throw some clear coat on this spot only and be done with it look man I'll even give you 20 bucks man come on do it and which has been politely declined by all so many body repair man yes if you own enough cars long enough eventually you'll run into this brawl where the clear coat will start to wear out on one area of the panel this will usually happen somewhere on your hood or on your roof or somewhere on your trunk and that's because these are the areas where they get the most amount of direct sunlight so here's a close look at what we're going to be working on today as you can see in some areas the clear coat is pretty much all gone and they're on these edges it's kind of flaky it continues all the way down pretty much all the way down to where the windshield start there's some clear coat damage on this end as well but for the most part the clear coat on this car is in pretty good shape now if you go to an auto body shop and just ask for a spot repair on your clear coat you're more than likely going to be politely declined that's because most reputable auto body shops have standards to me they cannot warranty their work if they apply clear coat on top of this and most important of all just like everyone else they need to make money but if you don't care about the longevity of your repair and you just want to make your panel look better than what it does now there's a way you can do this yourself and this video I'm going to show you how now the quality of your repair is going to vary based on how long the clear coat has been left neglected and damaged so get yourself some car wash soap and with a clean sponge thoroughly wash down the panel to be repaired and then we'll rinse off our panel with a clean bucket of water and next we're going to dry off our panel using a microfiber towel or in my case the sponge all right so before we can apply a nuclear code to this area and hopefully improve upon the look at this petal we need to remove any old clear code that might be flaking off at the same time scuff up any old clear code that might be in good shape so that when we apply our new clear coat it has something to adhere to and for this I like to use a gray scotch brite pad because not only this will scuff up our panel but also due to thick strand form it will help and removing any old flaky clear coat that we got on here and as I've said in my other video this is an automotive body repair and refinishing scotch brite pad it's not just any scotch brite pad now if you're interested in this or any other tools or products used in this video I put links to where you can buy them for cheap in the description box so don't be afraid to click on em and check em out now before we start using our scotch brite pad it's a good idea to mask off any adjacent panels that you don't want any scratches on I'm actually going to mask off this rear quarter-panel in addition to the roof because I don't want this video to get too long and I'll do this at a later time so if you're new to this when you go to apply your masking tape make sure you put the masking tape only on the panel that you're aiming to mask off because let's say you're not careful and a part of this masking tape ends up being on this panel afterwards when you apply your clear coat and then the clear coat dries and you go to peel off your masking tape when you do this you're going to peel off some of your new clear coat with it so make sure you're getting ready in between the two panels and then use a bunch of small pieces of masking tape if you have to so that you don't run your hard work when you go to peel these off alright so we do the same thing for the roof make sure we'll slide this piece of tape under our panel and now we get to use our scotch brite pad but something I forgot is that for this you'll need some elbow grease as well again link in the description box down below and when you do this you want to apply nice even and firm pressure make sure you go over all the areas and get as much of the flaking old picker that's on here off this panel and areas you want to pay special attention to is going to be around the edges and corners because if you don't scuff these down this is where your new clear coat is going to start peeling from fold your sketch by pad if you have to and go over all these corners and edges a lot of times I'll just go overall the ages first get them out of the way and then the rest of it it's very easy all right so here's a look at what we have so far as you can see it's pretty scuffed down now here's something you very important you need to pay attention to just because your clear coat damage ends at a certain spot that doesn't mean you stop scuffing it down in that area as well we need a buffer zone where are we going to blend the new clear coat that we're going to apply to this panel to the old clear coat that's on this panel now in this particular case it might be easier just to sand down or scuff down this panel since it pretty much ends here all the way down to here and then apply clear coat to this whole entire segment but then again people out there wouldn't learn how to blend the new clear coat into the old clear coat so here's what you need to do so wear your clicker damaged ends you need to keep sanding or stuffing down the panel about five or six inches past that area and again since ours ends about here we're going to keep going past that it's pretty much around here all right so here's a look at what we have as you can see this is nice and evenly scuffed down all the way to here so once again we'll grab our bucket of water and rinse them I'll repair yeah and then we thoroughly dry it it's very important that this is dry before the next step all right next we're going to mask off our repair area using some masking paper newspapers or in my case I'm actually going to use these blue shop towels alright so here's another important tip when it comes time to match the blend area you don't want to mask off where the scuff marks and the scratches end you actually need to come in a few inches and then put your masking tape and paper here but you want to avoid putting a masking tape flat like this because then when you display cut clear coat here you're going to have a line where you put the masking tape so what you want to do is to back mask this blend area and the way you do this is that you put your masking paper just above the area you want a back mask then apply your masking tape and then you simply push back or pull back on the masking paper and that's it myself a flat piece of tape this is what you have now which is going to help you avoid a thick line of clear coat here after you apply your new clear coat to this panel and next it's time to spray our clear coat and I strongly recommend you use a toque a clear coat which is what I have here which basically means your clear coat comes with its own activator or hardener these two k clear coats are much more durable and lasts a lot longer when you compare them to the one kit clear coats you buy at your local auto parts store but the only issue is if you want to buy one of these in an aerosol can you're going to have to find a local auto body shop supply store that carries them or you can buy them online again if you want to buy them online I put a link to in the description where you can find it alright so the way we're going to activate this is to first shake it for good two minutes alright next we remove this little red cap from top of the can and then place it on the bottom put it back on the ground like this and then we're going to press this in and this makes is our hardener with our clear coat there we go and then we shake it for another two minutes I want to say what's going to be easy and one last thing before we start spraying is that you want to get yourself a tack cloth and gently tack down your panel this way you get rid of all dust particles that could still be on here right before you start spraying your clear coat alright next from about 8 inches away you basically want to point and shoot and you want to put down about three medium coats waiting about ten minutes between each coat and the difference between a light coat versus a medium code versus a wet coat is basically the speed that you're applying your clear coat so if I was going really fast that would mean I was applying a light coat if I was going just with medium speed that would be a medium coat if I was going very slow that would mean that I was applying a heavy or wet coat and another tip for beginners is that you want to start moving the can first then start spraying and then when you get to the end where you want to stop you want to release this and then stop moving because if you don't start moving first before you start applying clear coat of paint you're going to end up leaving a blob of clear coat where you started or when you stop spraying and you really want to do that that's just not good practice also you're spraying 2k clear code you don't need one of these all right here we go so here's how things look after the first coat already looking pretty shiny I should say but we can't celebrate just yet because things will look a lot different when they're completely dry and this clay coat cures but for now we're just going to wait another 10 minutes and apply your second coat all right time for our second patch all right it looks even better now but if you put your eye right next to it you can still see some of the white marks that were on the old worn out clear coat I guess we'll find out how this looks soon enough but for now we wait another 10 minutes and apply our third coat alright next we'll wait about two or three hours and then we'll remove our masking paper and tape alright it's two hours later and we're now we're ready to peel off our masking paper here's another important tip I can give you and that's if you're peeling off masking tape right from an adjacent panel you peel it off pulling away from the panel you have clear coat on this way if there is any clear coat still attached to this masking tape it peels off right around the edges and it doesn't peel back and remove more clear coat from your panel by the way talked about it before and after shot this is a pretty huge improvement if you ask me but again this clear coat is still not dried so we're not going to celebrate just yet all right so here's how things look without masking tape and here's how things look in our blend area we've still got a bit of a line here but this is not too bad we should have no problem blending our new clear coat into our old clear coat but you're going to be able to do our blends we're gonna have to wait at least 48 hours for this clear coat to dry and Harden but if you have the luxury of time wait even longer so let's say you waited a week or two before you did your blend that will be perfect as far as house 2 and after you apply clear coat you can drive your car well ideally you want to let it sit overnight because if you drive it sooner than let's say three four or five hours you run the risk of getting dust and debris stuck into your new clear coat alright guys so welcome back it's been a couple days since we last radar clicking on here so now we're ready to do our plan first let me give you a close-up shot of our repair area as you can see it turned out really nice pretty nice and shiny with minimal orange peel yeah this clear coat is pretty good stuff you can't get much better results than this using an aerosol can but again is expected if you look very closely you can still see that white marks left over from the old clear coat but from a few yards out it looks just as good as new and it's a difference of night and day when compared to the old clear coat alright enough of me glue let me show you how you can blend this now what you want to do next is to get your source on 1500 grit sandpaper and then using a soft sanding block and some clean water lightly wet sand this blend area between our two clear coats we're basically trying to get rid of this line that we had here and have a smooth transition between the two clear coats and every so often make sure you wipe down the area and check your work you don't want to overdo this and remove too much of your new clear coat that you just put on there so here's a closer look at what we have right now we got rid of our line that was here but we did peel back some of our new clear coat but that's okay it's not too much and this shouldn't be a problem so next you'll need to grab yourself a polisher like this and then get yourself a wool pad and attach it to your polisher and then using some medium grit rubbing compound completely polish this area where we have the dull clear coat now here's something else that's very important that you want to play close attention to when polishing this area you want to make sure the direction of the rotation of your polisher is away from the new clear coat that you just apply it here so this polisher I got here is going to be turning this way so I'm going to be going at this at this direction so as this is turning it's just going to heat this area and get more on the old clear coat because if you go the other direction let's say you go this way as this is turning this is going to heat this area on the nuclear code side more and it's just going to peel back the new critical you just put on there and you obviously don't want that and you want to set this to low to medium speed and as you're going down and coming back up try to have just almost no pressure or maybe even pick this up and come back up and go back down over your clear coat area and just use almost no pressure or very little pressure as you're polishing alright so first we'll apply a little bit of rubbing compound and I'm almost out but this should be enough now we'll spread this around so that it doesn't fling all over us and put our polisher to a low setting and dark policy and then after a couple of passes we'll clean off the area and then check our work as you can see we made improvements but we can still see the transition line actually you see it more because of the lighting if I were to cover this you would see a lot less of it but we're still going to have to do this a couple more times until we get rid of this all right so about three passes later here's a look at our transition area I'm not even sure if you guys are going to be able to pick this up on the camera but it's right here this is where a transition was again you can still see it if you put your eye right next to it and know exactly where to look and all that stuff but again from a yard or two out you really can't see the transition you can see a little bit from this angle and maybe I could polish this some more but again this is never going to be perfect but when you compare it to what you had before one could argue it is perfect now something else you can do to hide this is to put some wax on here on this transition area but generally speaking you want to wait at least a month before you put wax newly sprayed clear coat so there you have it folks doing spot repair and your clear coat can greatly improve the look of your clear coat but it will never look as good as new or as good as if you were to completely pane repaint and clear coat the set panel also results may vary based on how long the clear coat has been left neglecting like this clear coat wasn't that severe whereas the clear coat on the green tile that I showed earlier in this video is a pretty severe case and if you're curious how it will look like and want me to do a repair video on the clear coat on the Toyota Camry I'll make a poll and put a link to it right here on this side the speed then you can participate in enough boats are cast for me doing another video on that I'll make another video on that and put it up on my channel that say I hope you enjoyed watching this video if you did do me a favor and share it on your favorite social network and also check out these other related videos on which I put links to on this side of the screen that you can click on there will also be links in the description box down below as well all right thanks for watching I'll see you guys [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Ratchets And Wrenches

Views: 5,066,416

Rating: 4.7264514 out of 5

Keywords: Rathcets and Wrenches, clear coat repair, how to repair peeling clear coat, clear coat spray paint, clear coat headlights, clear coat scratch repair, clear coat painting, clear coat plasti dip, clear coating a car, how to repair clear coat peeling, how to repair clear coat on a car, how to fix clear coat damage, how to fix clear coat failure, how to repair worn clear coat, can you spot repair clear coat, possible to spot repair peeling clear coat, Spray painting a car with cans

Id: lbSIjsUeWZQ

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 15 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/DoglessDreamer]

Good stuff i have a red mustang with that problem but dont want to pay for the red paint i might try this first since it only on the roof.