fixing the greatest eyesore of life.

DON'T WORRY. I'M STILL ALIVE!!!!!
It's been quite a while since I've blogged and I have a few things I've been meaning to blog... so bear with me as I get back up to speed.

Let's begin with the overdue post on the total 26 hours I spent on my car over the 2 week break b/w winter & spring term (last 2 weeks of April). The whole repair session probably took up to around 12 hours.
For those interested, it's a 2003 mazda protege 5, manual. I bought it used and have had it since October 2007. The car's name is Tofu =).

So my car has been getting quite a bit of rust on the rear fender. Decided to grind it down and repaint. During the process I decided to repaint my badges and rear valence too since they were getting fugly. Here is the picture story.

WHAT MAKES ME CRY AT NIGHT:
rated R. - parents, hide your children! not for the squeamish



rust & bubbling galore. so sad =(

BRING ON THE DRILL:
I felt so wrong... attacking my baby like this... =S... it's okay Tofu... just bear with the pain for a bit...


grind grind grind.


took out all major rust area and bubbles


all prep'd for paint. Sanded down rear valence (the bottom portion of my back bumper).


the paints for the day. body colour paint. normal primer (valence). rust primer (on metal). clear coat. forgot to include the gunmetal colour spray can for valence/badges.


Badges removed. really annoying taping the Protege badge...

gave em a quick sand and then bring on the primer!

fender rust primer

primer for allllll

and now for the colour coats. gunmetal!

valence getting a coat

badges done with clearcoat

body colour paint on the fenders

after some wet sanding to smooth down the base coat

looks like clearcoat going on here

This is after the clear coat... i think.

okay rear valence done

I was just waiting for things to dry a bit so played around with the angel eyes =D. still look sexxyyyyy

so after all coats, I decided to let the fenders dry fully overnight before tape removal. I actually did clearcoat too heavy and got some yellowing which threw the colour off a bit. After wet-sanding the next morning it fixed most of it. The pic quality goes down since it was dark by this point in time and my phone cam can't handle low light =(

Next morning. reapplied the badges.

So I never really got pics of the actual finish of the fender. I had to do quite a bit of smoothing/wet sanding to clean it up and get rid of the tape line. I used my touch-up paint (brush) to cover the line created from the tape and then sanded that down to be a smooth transition. In the end it turned out quite well. I don't see any more rust. Nor do I even notice the transition from the paint. If I'm looking SUPER hard, I can find it... but that's me.. and I'm already pretty picky. 

In the end. I'm super super glad I got this done before the summer. This being probably the second last summer I have the car, I want to enjoy it while I can =)

Post-detail results in the next post!