How To Paint A Car Bumper

Right, repairing a scratch on a bumper, there are quite a few bits and bobs you'd need. We do it with machines. You can sometimes do it by hand, but I'll show you the machine way as it's a lot quicker.

Normally, the machine is around about the hundred pound mark, and you can buy an electric orbital sander. We use air, just because it's cheaper and more cost effective for us to do this. On the car, we've got a scratch right here.

I'm going to remove the scratch. This is the machine I'm going to use. If it's only a little scratch, you'll be fine, you won't necessarily need the investment of one of these machines, but it needs a lot longer sort of rubbing down to remove the scratch.

The rubbing down papers that we use, all depends on what you're doing. If you want to rip something apart, take it back to bare metal, you'll use 40 grit. Use 40 grit if you want to take a load of paint off and strip it back to bare metal, then you go through the stages.

For most scratches, we use an 80 on them. On bumpers, we use a 180 and then go finer from there, but you need to finish off round about the 400 mark because if you don't, when you prime it, all the little scratch marks will come back. So you need to go finer throughout the whole process.

Anything with bodywork, always go to the finer grade. To finish off, before you prime up, you need to be looking around the 400 grits to get a nice finish, so you don't get any nasty edges that will come back later on. I'm going to put a 180 DA pad on there, connect it up to the air and switch it on, taking my time and making sure the whole scratch has been removed.

With a scratch, if you don't remove the whole of the scratch, when you spray it, the line will come back again, so you must take it right back to the main material before you prime it up. When you come to the end, rub it down a bit further along just to make sure the scratch has been removed. Now, didn't take me a long time to do with the machine.

If you were doing that by hand, that could be 10-15 minutes worth of work, but then for a one-off scratch, it's worthwhile doing it by hand. That's how it should look. I've done that with a 180 DA pad.

You cannot prime straight on top of a 180 so you need to go finer with your rubbing down paper. I've got some 400 here which is what I'm going to use to top it up. We've done the rubbing out of the scratch, now, we need to prime it.

You can't just prime on top of the shiny paint, the scratch marks are too coarse. So we need to use a finer rubbing down paper. I've got some 400 here, I'm now going to feather this out and take those scratch marks out, working from the centre out.

Now, it is all rubbed down. The area where the 180 was is the area I want to prime. The primer overspray will go further along so I need to make sure the surrounding areas have had a good rub down, because if I prime up on top of shiny paint, it will flake off.

I haven't really gone wide enough, so I'm just going to go a little bit wider. That's it with the machine, now I'll show you without the machine. I've got another scratch here that I'm going to do with block.

What I'm doing is I'm masking up the bodywork and the back light, because regardless of whether you're using the machine or you're doing it by hand, you do not want to be scratching around your panels. Got your car looking all nice and pretty and then suddenly you've got a big scratch mark! We use a bit of masking tape, you can use gaffer tape, anything that sticks. Cello tape, really, no good, it's got to be masking tape, something with a bit of build on it.

Now, I've got a block with a 180 DA pad on there and I'm rubbing down. With the machine, it takes it back straight away but you've got that outlay for the machine. You can't go too coarse because that will just scratch the life out of the bumper.

Being a soft material, it will cause you no end of problems. You've got your underneath coat, primer coat, ba