Reviving a bumper

Azure · 05-21-2008, 07:16 PM

The front bumper on my 01 GT is a total travesty. The car is driven highway 99% of the time and it's full of holes, pockmarks, and rock spots, some all the way through the paint, showing white through. Worse yet... it's a black car and every bit of damage is easily visible. I'm taking up the rather hefty challenge of bringing it back to life, with a bottle of touch up paint, clear coat, Optimum compound and polish, Poorboys wax and sealant, and my polisher.

My question is, what's the best way to tackle this project? I'm certain I'll need to wetsand at some point to remove all the surface irregularities. My order of progress right now:

-Touch up
-Wetsand
-Clearcoat touch up
-Compound/polish
-Wax, etc.

I have a few specific questions:

-Should I clearcoat the touch up before or after polishing? I feel like I will need to wetsand the touch up blobs down before clearcoating them.
-Will polishing brand new touchup ruin it? How long should I wait after touching up?
-What grit wetsand should I use? Will the polish remove all of the wetsand scratches?

Any other specific advice would be great, I really want my baby's front end back to life.

SVTBill · 05-21-2008, 08:50 PM

touch up paint for the most part is single stage and you won't need any clear

do thin thin layers, clean the bumper well. in the chips put a thin dab of the TUP in there, end of a tooth pick is easy to use. wait about 4 hours and add another coat. keep doing this until it's a tiny bit higher than the rest of your paint. then you'll want to sand it down.

2000 grit should do the trick. sand it level with the rest of your paint and polish the sanding marks away

after the last coat of touch up paint i'd wait about 24 hours before taking any paper to it