Paint and Body Recently finished repairing my 94 Cobra's rear quarter panel

Chythar

Recently finished repairing my rear
Dirt-Old 20+Year Member
Aug 26, 2004
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Foothill Ranch, CA
Hey all, unlurking to show off what I've been doing lately. I've been spending my time over the last year learning Bondo, then learning automotive paint. I had a big dent in the rear quarter panel of my 94 Cobra that needed to be fixed. I never sent it to a shop 'cause money, and I kept seeing bad Bondo jobs online. I wanted to find a good shop that cared about their work, but I never got around to it.

Told this story to a buddy of mine, and he said he could help me out. Putting Bondo on a car is easy - the hard part is shaping it right so it looks good. And that's what my friend taught me. Took me a long time to get the shape right, the RQP has some of the most complex curves on the car. The first photo shows the original dent, and where me and my friend got the Bondo to. It's not shaped right, it's still pretty flat and doesn't match the other side.

EDIT: My friend and I pulled out the metal as far as we could with a puller, we didn't just fill the dent in with Bondo. Even I know better than that.

I didn't get photos of the unprepped Bondo, but the second photo is of the finished shape and sanded paint. Here it's ready for final polish.

Next up is the final polished paint. The process I used has 8 steps - 5 sanding steps, and three polish steps with an orbital sander.

And last is a better shot of how shiny the paint is. Oh, and even better - this is $5 rattle can paint from O'Reilly. I had a lot of learning to do, and I didn't want to do that with an expensive paint. Good thing, as I made a lot of mistakes and had to repaint the panel several times. I plan on repainting the entire car with a better paint, but this will do for now.

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Looks good my man, nice job. I never had the patience for body work, after getting covered with bondo and primer dust half-a-dozen times I give up and just spray it, and it shows. Yours looks pro.
I definitely agree with you, this was a major PITA. I would hate to do this for a living, it's so much work to get it just right. But for my car, I'll take the time I need to make it perfect.
 
Next time try AutoTouchUP.Com. Give your vin#, and the mix rattle cans that match
I bought some from them for another project, but they want over $15 a can. And my paint is badly faded, so it wouldn't match anyway.

Oh, be careful of their Ford Black paint - it seems Ford has changed their official UA paint mix and added some sort of flake into it. I have a new rear bumper for the car, and I used that paint. And it came out with a metallic flake in it. Didn't match at all. Now I have to sand it all off and find something else. Since I'm going to repaint the whole car soon, I'm looking into a PPG Deltron black, but I haven't decided yet.
 
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Is there a question here other than 'how hard can I pat myself on the back' because you deserve it, looks good :nice:
You won't mind if I put this in gen talk, I think that is not a tech question.
Nope, not a tech question. Just always spend my time there, it just feels like it's the old 94-95 forum of old. So, I posted in a dark corner of this forum and you've booted me out into the light?

The light, it burns!
 
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