How to prep XJ Piece for paint

The previous owner of my XJ repainted the whole jeep the factory red color. It came out nice, but after I bought it and began driving it, the paint started peeling on the lower right side of the header panel I believe. I know this piece is plastic, and he said that he used a flexible paint for all the plastic pieces. I was just wondering how I should go about prepping and painting this part? As you can see I put a little touch up paint on it, but since then it has gotten worse. I want to sand this part and get a touch up can of paint from the dealer.

I'm not planning on repainting the whole piece, just where it needs touched up. Here's a picture:

Just like you said...sand it down and make sure it's completely smoothed out. You should finish sanding with around 320 grit so you won't see the scratches. Then wipe it down with thinner, let dry, and paint.

Not too sure about clearcoat though....

that may be cracked fiberglass, my jeep had the same issue!

I took the "touch up" pen and colored the white to patriot blue, looked good unless you were really looking for it!

Mtb Jak said:

that may be cracked fiberglass, my jeep had the same issue!

I took the "touch up" pen and colored the white to patriot blue, looked good unless you were really looking for it!

Click to expand...

Would I still go about the same process of sanding and painting? I'm not going to go all out professional paint job or something, I just want to do a better touch up then with the pen.

alever said:

The previous owner of my XJ repainted the whole jeep the factory red color. It came out nice, but after I bought it and began driving it, the paint started peeling on the lower right side of the header panel I believe. I know this piece is plastic, and he said that he used a flexible paint for all the plastic pieces. I was just wondering how I should go about prepping and painting this part? As you can see I put a little touch up paint on it, but since then it has gotten worse. I want to sand this part and get a touch up can of paint from the dealer.

I'm not planning on repainting the whole piece, just where it needs touched up. Here's a picture:

Click to expand...

Little late to reply, but I suppose it won't hurt. The picture doesn't show btw.

I may be wrong but I believe the part you're talking about is hard plastic. In this case it's not really necessary to use flex agent... My collision teacher didn't even like to use flex additive on flexible bumpers, although I tend to be a little nervous to try and always mix it in on flexible plastic.

The way you'd do it at a shop is to sand down the area being spot painted, and then sand with 1000-1500 grit/scruff the rest of the panel + all the panels surrounding it. Spray the color over the part being repaired until the color matches the rest of the vehicle, then clear the entire panel + all the panels surrounding it to get the best match.

The way I'd probably do it to make things a little easier would be to sand the damaged area down, then sand the rest of the header panel with 1000-1500 grit, spray color paint on the damaged part you sanded all the way down, then clear the whole header. This saves you the labor of doing all the panels around it, although the newly painted part will be more obvious when surrounded by older paint.

If you use a buffer (optional) on the car after painting it on the surrounding panels, you would be able to blend the surrounding panels in better with the newly painted header, making it not as obvious as well as making your car look better.

Does that make sense? I could go into more detail if you need me to.

Don't use thinner to wipe the piece down before you paint. Use the recommended cleaner for the paint system you are using. Some require you to wipe off the cleaner before it evaporates. Others require you to let it "flash" then wipe down. If you use regular thinner you will get solvent pop or fish eye in the finish because regular thinner leaves trace amounts of solvent behind. I've made this mistake before and had to sand down the entire car I was painting and start all over.

I know its probably too late but heres my $0.02. If the piece is plastic and not fiberglass it needs to be baked. Plastic continually realeases chemicals from the manufacturing process and if you don't bake it all those chemicals will continue to come out and separate the paint. If you are just using rattle can I would suggest sanding it with 1000 grit like someone else mentioned and use a degreaser. If you already painted show us some pictures and let us know how you did it. Best of luck if you have yet to paint.
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