Did I just sand off my paint?!

[War_Wagon]

1. Go to the wreckers as Redpoint said, find a black hood.

2. Failing that, there are places a lot cheaper than Macco. I can get a hood painted here for $200 all in, and it's a decent enough job. If you know anyone that works at a car lot, ask them where they get it done. On a car that age you don't need perfection, just an improvement. You could also see if there is an ADESA auction near you, I used to work for them and know that they are pushing on getting their side services busy, meaning if the one near you has an onsite body shop for car dealers to use, they will be more than happy to take your money too. Worth a try if there is one close by.

[Xist]

I did not call those two auto recyclers as I wrote that I would yesterday, but I was pretty busy today, although car-part does not show any black hoods, three or four other color, and two that are unspecified.

I thought that Maaco was the cheapest, both least expensive and lowest quality. I read stories about Les Schwab, but Maaco seems to have almost as bad a reputation.

I read some more reviews. Some say great things and some say horrible things, but people keep saying that if you do the preparation yourself, it makes a huge difference.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Believe it or not, I still had beautiful girlfriends that were willing to date a guy that drove that. It's what's inside that counts.

How smart were they? What had they accomplished with their lives?

Did they get you into ecomodding?

[redpoint5]

All the cool kids are doing carbon fiber wraps, especially on Honda Civics.

Drop $20 on a wrap kit and spend the rest of your hard earned dough on more important things.

Originally Posted by Xist

How smart were they? What had they accomplished with their lives?

I don't know because I don't keep in touch with the exes. Trick question right?

Seriously though, I won't even Facebook friend a girl I am dating. Nothing good can come of that.

...and just for the record, I am happily married, and my wife knows I'm on this site all the time. She is all about driving efficiently, just not into forums and general nerdiness. Disinterest in physics must run in their (woman) DNA. That said, she did get 5 requests for interviews at prestigious schools as a candidate for PA grad school. My wife keeps telling me she will soon know more about the human body than me, and I won't have any more excuses to avoid fruits and vegetables.

[Xist]

The carbon vinyl kit is interesting, is there anything similar that is not pretending to be something else? Marine wrap?

[redpoint5]

You could go camo...

[California98Civic]

My black 1998 Civic's hood has exactly the same cracking problem. Has had the problem since at least 2006, when a professional detailing revealed the cracks. Certain polishes make the cracking visible. Just washing and waxing tends to make the cracking fade. Scratchout and Maguiers make the cracks bright white and standout.

[Xist]

How bad would it be if I painted my hood with Rustoleum? A black one finally showed up in a junk yard. It says A0 for $50. How would they mark a part with crazing? I am just unsure about picking up a hood in my Civic, I would want to try to schedule something with my roommate who has a truck, but if I could repaint it for less than that hood costs...

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...0-a-16333.html

From what I have read, this is YMMV. Some people say the paint fades after eighteen months, while others say they did it three to five years ago and it still looks good.

How to Paint your Car without a Gun | The Smoking Tire

One guy said he painted cars professionally: “I will note that you can roll on activated acrylic enamel as well. If you would use this instead of rustoleum, you can buy it for around $60 a gallon for the cheap stuff. The durability and UV protection will be so much higher that it isn’t even worth thinking about…you have all those hours in it and the cost is about $40 more total.”

“You can buy isocyanate hardeners for old school alkyd enamels like Rustoleum. $30 for a gallon of Rustoleum, and $30 for a pint of hardener to mix with it.” So, the same price of cheap activated acrylic enamel?

[Daox]

When I repaired the rust on my sister's jetta I just used a spray can of black paint. It turned out pretty good. Its definitely not perfect, but on a 14 year old car (its a 2002) it blends right in and you can't tell unless you're looking for it. So, IMO you can totally do it. How long it'll last is another question that I don't have an answer to.

Before:




Sanded down:




Bondo and sanding:




Primed and sanded:




Painted:

[California98Civic]

Don't use rustoleum. A buddy painted his sweet Metro project with red rustoleum and all the surfaces that face a lot of sun have lost their shine. All of it is dull. It has barely been 2 years. Might be less than that. He put soooo much work into it, stripping the car down to bare body. Quite the bummer.