I have no experience whatsoever with auto body detailing, painting, or anything like that so I'm working on common sense (the little of that which I do have) to attempt to tackle my next project. So anyone who can give me some tips for the situation I am about to describe, I would like to thank in advance.

Recently (a week or so ago), I debadged my car. Long story short, there were some white lines outlining where the LANCER letters used to be. I heard this was normal, so I scrubbed, cleaned, scrubbed, cleaned, ad infinitum. They just got more and more prominent, so I eventually brought the car to two different body shops. They both said it was obvious the previous owner had repainted the car and just had the shop tape up the emblems instead of take them off, then put them back on (presumably to save money). So the white lines are actually the border between the new paint clearcoat and the old paintjob. If you run your finger over the letter ghosts, you can feel an edge easily. Both shops quoted me at hundreds of dollars to repaint the whole trunk. I can't afford this, and even if I rebadge, it won't really help because the clearcoat might continue to be weathered off now it was exposed by me.

So what I plan on doing is buying some touch-up paint and clearcoat. I will go over the lines and maybe a little around each line with the touch up paint, a couple of times. Then I will either use a rubbing compound/wetsand it and even it out, repeat that another time. Clear coat it and hopefully it won't be noticeable and will come out even,

Does anyone who has experience with paint and detailing know if this sounds feasible or am I going to do further damage? I'm a student, I don't have hundreds of dollars to paint the trunk. Any comments? Thanks again.

 

the only way to get rid of those edges is to sand them down and repaint the whole trunk.. if you wanna make a trip across the sound ill do it for $200 at my shop

 

Damn; that's what the shops kept telling me, that's a shame. Thanks for the offer :-)

 

yea, it drives me nuts when pple dont do the job right, ill turn the job away before i cut corners.. you could give it a shot trying to fill it w/ touch up and clear then wetsand/buff it.. ive had luck doing that on scratches before, but i think it might be a bit to big to work on the emblem letters

 

Cool, I think I'm going to at least try. The way I look at it is, at the current moment I have a few options.

1) Pay a large chunk of change to have it repainted.
2) Try using the touchup paint/clear.
3) Do nothing.

If I do the touchup paint/buff it and I ruin it further, than I just will have to pay to have it repainted. If I do nothing, I will have to get it repainted eventually. So basically, if I make it look worse, it's just temporary. If I f*** it up real bad, I might be taking that trip across the sound after all haha.

 

Why not save up the money and then try the touchup that way if you do a good job you can buy something else for your car. if not to the shop you go.

 

yep, save and get it done right, otherwise you will just be dissapointed

 

Yeah, I've gotta agree. I just feel like a total idiot, this was supposed to be the cheapest thing you can do to improve the look of your car, and it ends up costing me hundreds of dollars. This is not uncommon for my luck, though.

 

I really hope my body shop didn't do the same thing; I'll find out though once I finally get a round to debadging.

 

ehhh ... i leave my exterior painting to the pros!

But i say just Rebadge it ..

 

Just curious, where in LI do you live? I'm out in suffolk and theres a local place around me that actually does really good work and is reasonably priced. I'm getting my EVO wing and my grill painted next week for only $100. They did all the body and paintwork on my old DSM when i got hit and it was far less than what i thought. If you've got some time and you live close enough you should take a drive out for a quote

 

Please edit your profile and put your general location in there, but where is this?

 

I'm in Brentwood, what about you? If they could do it for around $100 I'd be all over that, because that is somewhat manageable. But the $400+ they have been quoting me elsewhere is definitely not. Thanks for the suggestion, and any more info you could give me, either in this thread or via PM, would be awesome, thanks.

 

Yeah, seriously man, it's a nightmare.

Yep, I would except now even if I do rebadge it, the border between the clearcoat and the old paint has been weathered a little bit so now they no longer are where the letters were completely. If I rebadged, you'd see some weird amorphous lines around the badges, so I'm screwed