Don't do this! Opened hood with wiper arms up!

twogts4us · 03-09-2004

I was in one of those detailing frenzies and had the wiper arms up while cleaning the windshield and cowl area, then decided to get into the rest of the cowl area covered by the hood. Whack, smack - the hood hit the PS wiper arm and left a nasty 1 inch scratch on the back edge of the hood, easily removing the thin paint.
Then, to make matters worse, I said to myself, "Hey, I can fix this-no problem." I bought Duplicolor's touch up kit with primer, clearcoat, a mini sanding block and 2000 grit sandpaper along with a touchup bottle of black paint. "Easy Nuff" - I said to myself. I followed their instructions to chip away the loose paint with a razor blade...I knew better and used a plastic razor blade. Unfortunately, the small 1" X 1/8" scratch kept growing as I chipped away. So I stopped, lightly sanded, and brushed on a couple coats of primer. Further sanding marred the surrounding clearcoat until I ended up with a 3" X 1" boo-boo. Then, I said, "Well, this touchup kit won't do". So I bought Duplicolor's 5oz spray cans of primer, black paint and clearcoat. "Can't be too difficult" I said to myself. I carefully sanded the boo-boo down until it was perfectly smooth, masked & cleaned the area, tack ragged it, then laid down 3-4 coats of primer, then 4-5 coats of color. Now I figured I'd just let it dry, colorsand it, then go back in a week and clearcoat the area. To make this long story short...the hood is now up the street at a body shop, getting fixed properly - hopefully without having to shoot the whole hood. Cost to fix my f-up $150, or if they end up doing the entire hood, $325. Lesson in my Mustang life - priceless!

I told my wife if I ever touch another can of spray paint, to remind me of what happened here. I will ONLY use Duplicolor's touchup products, which, by the way, the new ones with the ball point pen tip, work very well - very precise. Don't mess with anything bigger unless you REALLY know what you are doing.

Fordgazm · 03-09-2004

That sucks

79 cobra · 03-13-2004

My wipers are up on my 79 .
I open the hood with no problem .
I don't think anyone has great results with dupli-color .

Mike Kievit · 03-13-2004

So what happened to the wiper?

I tried the same thing on one of my rocker panels. I ended up putting a black tape stirpe on there. Then I tried a white stripe. Lasted a year. I bought new rocker panels from stangparts.com. Total cost of $300.00 after getting them to the paint shop. And needless to say. There are ten million colors of white. Close enough.

MK

twogts4us · 03-20-2004

The wiper arm survived just fine (of course, the cheap things never break, right?) The wiper smacked back down onto the windshield. The hood cost $165 to have the back edge repainted - fortunately for these new-edge SN95s, they have these sharp edges where you can paint right up to and they'll blend right in. The local body shop I took it to did a great job...you'd never know anything was done, even if I pointed it out. The nasty scrape/scratch is just gone. Lessons learned...be careful in whatever you do and don't get in over your head with bodywork/painting projects.

VenemoussC · 03-20-2004

That does really suck, sorry to hear that!