Cracking paint fixable?

In the chaos of the holiday, I for the first time backed into a mailbox. The damage is quite significant believe it or not.

Busted out the tail light, dented thebed side and scratched the crap out of the fender and into the bedside.

I was thinking I could get the dent popped out and attempt to buff the damage out myself and use touch up paint. That was until I noticed cracked paint.

Is the cracked paint going to be fixable for a novice with a buffer and some touch up paint? Or is it just going to keep spider cracking?

I'd be willing to try my hand at wet sanding but don't want to do it if more than likely its not going to work and I'm going to get rusting down the road.

I'm probably looking at $1,500 worth of damage for complete repair. If I can reduce that cost and work on it myself I want to do that. Just want zero rusting possibility.

Its basically a small pin point where its cracked. Like the size of a decent rock chip.

 

First you have to tell us how many beers you had before you backed into the mailbox.

 

None. Thats whats whats most embarrassing

 

Last photo has the chip. I admit I picked the paint off to see how bad the chip is. Looks like its not cracking much. Hard to get a good detailed photo

 

Was this a mailbox in a brick housing?? Thats so much damage!

Good luck with responses

 

Reach up from underneath with an open hand and slap the larger area of the dent. It looks as thou a good part of it will pop out. Do it before you go to the body shop for the estimate.

 

No. run of the mill mailbox with ZERO damage. Can you believe that?

 

Find a bedside at the junkyard on a front end collision truck?

 

I happen to have 2 oem 2015 led tailights for sale

 

I think I might use this as an excuse to get some blacked out or paint matched tail lights but I'll keep that in mind.

 

Does anyone recomnend a good cutting compound that might help with this?

Also will a cutting compound be able to smooth out touch up paint or will that strictly be a wet sand job? I also have a scratch on my bumper from earlier I think I will work on with this.

 

Would thone happen fit on a 2005???

Asking for a friend

 

Check out the detailing forum when you get a chance. Wet sanding will be your best bet when it comes to touch up paints. Otherwise, Meguiars Ultimate Compound is really good. Follow it up with Ultimate Polish and a good sealant/wax, and you'll be good to go

 

Ok so I never got an official quote to fix the whole thing 100% through a body shop but I am willing to bet it’s going to be over $2,000. Just the fender flare alone costs $400 unpainted (without any of the clips to install it too).

I decided to fix it as cheap as possible. I have a buddy that runs a PDR business and I had him pop out the dents as much as possible. He wasn’t happy about having to do it because it was a lot of time, but he did it and I think he did a pretty good job! I will admit though this will never be a show truck. When the light hits the panel just right you can see the rippled metal underneath. 95% of the time though, no one could likely tell something happened.

I washed the panel very well with Chemical Guys Clean Slate soap and a little Dial to strip the sealer and wax I put on it a few months ago. I clayed with Mother’s light clay bar and then finished up with a little denatured alcohol diluted in a gallon of water.

I wanted to take a stab at seeing what should polish out. By looking at it, it seems some of the scrapes went all the way through the paint in some tiny spots. I started off using Mequire’s Scratch X on a microfiber pad and tried to hand buff through the scratched. It seems like everything was coming off so I stepped it up with my Porter Cable DA polisher. I used Hex Logic pad – orange cutting pad and more Mequire’s Scratch X (which I won’t use with a DA Polisher anymore). Everything came right out. All the scuffs and paint scratches came out. I did the whole panel twice, 2 passes each direction. w/ 50% overlap. Everything buffed out with the exception of two deep scratches doing horizontal. One I know was from this incident the other I think is from something else. The scratches are pretty deep and I’m a bit scared to try to get them out right now.

That was the easy stuff (obviously). The only thing left were two paint chips going all the way through the primer. For these I cleaned the panel again and did a denatured alcohol wipe down. I used Chemical Guys ICON Iron Remover on the spots to neutralize any oxidation that was starting in the metal (both spots turned purple O_O). Cleaned again with the alcohol and used a paint pen to fill in the spots.

The concern I have with this, and why I made the post, was I could tell the paint was cracking. Before I polished I could see the spider cracks around the spot. I was a little liberal with the touch-up paint application to see if that wouldn’t “glue” everything together. I’m not sure whether I not what I did is going to be a good fix for this. I will watch the area very closely to check for any more cracking or rusting under the new paint.

This paint correction was a month ago. I need to do another 1-2 coats of touch up paint and then in 60-90 days I will attempt to wet sand and polish flat. I have a few other spots on the truck that need touch up so I will do the whole truck at one time once the weather warms up.

So far I’m $320 bucks in (PDR) and need a new pair of taillights I’ll get to later on as well. Over all I don’t think too devastating. It’s not perfect but I can live with it.
After PDR and Before Paint Correction:

After Paint Correction - Paint Chip:


After Touch-Up Paint:

 

looks pretty dam good compared to what it was!

 

Nice work. A DIY "pretty good" inexpensive fix is always better than a "pretty good" expensive body shop fix

Plus, some self-satisfaction.

 

I found out I don't want a truck in anything but white. When you put touch up paint on it, you can't find the spot! I have to feel for it haha