Well folks, decided I would go ahead and "Get 'er done" now that I have 2 days off.. already pulled my rear fender flares off and had to run inside to get dressed for work.. that, plus it was raining and didnt want to get soaking wet trying to pull the fronts off


I am going to be doing a couple things with them while they are off.. I'm very sick of those little plastic tab pusher upper things to hold them in place, so I went ahead and purchased some bolts and locking nuts for them along with some small washers..

************************************************** ********************
Painting Supplies:
Assortment of Sand Paper (60-220 Grit)
3x Krylon Fusion Flat Black Primer
3x Krylon Fusion Flat Black Paint
3x Krylon Fusion Matte Coat Clearcoat

Roughly 1 can per coat for the 4 fenders, so 3 coats of each will be perfect for it.


************************************************** ********************

Picked up a bunch of 1/4 x 3/4 Coarse Thread bolts, along with some small washers, and Locking Nuts to go with, this is my setup for painting the heads a flat black.. notice how I found a way to keep the threads clean while being able to get all around the head of it... I taped up a box to spray in so I didn't get any over spray anywhere.. its what I usually do for all my small projects like this:

If you feel like doing this yourself.. pay close attention to the type of paint I'm using.. its a Rust-Preventative ENAMEL.. If you are looking at painting the bolts and washers, make sure it IS NOT Stainless Steel for the bolts/washers! Stainless Steel has a coating which likes to resist any types of paint, helps it to flake off very easy.. if for some chance you did accidentally buy them and cant return them, try soaking them in vinegar overnight.. it should strip some of the coating off and give a good surface to paint on. Enamel hardens to a very hard shell when it dries and cures properly.. if you grab a run of the mill paint, it will flake off on the smooth metal of this surface.. and there isn't enough surface area to do a proper couple coats of primer/paint/clear coat.. Enamel is all you will need.





This is the second coat I have given them, going to do a third after another hour passes and leave it at that.. let it harden for most of the day so the paint wont strip off when I go to fasten my flares with them.


The 2 rear fender flares ar epulled off my truck right now, but I need to wait until daylight to get the rest, will provide more pictures when the sun starts shining :-)

 

Just went down for my third coat.. I am giving each coat roughly 35-45 minutes to dry and harden. 3 coats look like it will be plenty for this application, the second one had already hardened enough for me to scrape with a fingernail and no dent showed.

The light is just starting to come up out here, in another hour and a half or so I should be able to get outside into our barn, pull my truck up, and remove the front fender flares as well. I will finish the flares first, then see if I have time for the rear bumper plastic cover, and the front bumper valance.

Painting anything that has the possibility of getting chipped requires a proper layering of paints, and a good hard clear coat on top of it (preferably 2 or 3 coats) and allowed to cure most of a day before its put to any use.. If you want the maximum results, you should keep them off your rig for at least a week in a nice 70ish degree area to fully dry, harden, and cure... that will give you the optimum look you would want to go for, without worrying about chipping them on install or any careless tools scraping them.

Rule of Thumb: If you can nick it with your fingernail, its not ready to be installed. <-- Thats the biggest problem alot of people end up having when doing paint work, wait till its done right and proper and you wont have to go back and redo another coat on it.




For a heads up: I have alot of experience in fine detail work.. I have been modding computer cases for years and years now, hacking thigns up with a Dremel, using airbrush and rattlecans on intracate parts, covering all sorts of materials including plastics, aluminum, steel, stainless steel, and fabrics. Along with doing custom paint schemes on cases, multilayered with specks and such.

 

wheres


the


pics!!!


lol.

 

i know! you cant say something like that and not have pics. lol

 

OH gosh, they will be coming up, ended up getting called in to work (DAMNIT) and had to halfway abandon my project right early this morning.. Just got back home though!! So out I go to get some more done!! :-D

 

Alright folks.. dug back down to work, got my front two fenders pulled off, haven't had the time to clean up the dirt left off, so excuse the nasty brownish look on my white from under them (I did clean off the two rear under-fender areas from yesterday though).

Now, as stated above, I chose not to stick with using those crappy annoying plastic tabs.. they arent worth buying, in my own opinion.. because you have like a 50/50 chance of breaking them when you pull them out, so they are unuseable.. and over here, a pack of 9 of them costs about 6 bucks. So, in lieu of that.. this is my process of getting the buttons "pushed out", I used the serrated knife on my leatherman to pry between the body and the flare, and proceded to cut them out.



Next, when you remove the flares, you do need to be careful.. you have to give it some oomph to pop the tabs out from the wheel wells, but you dont want to break them.. as its a ford-only part and I'm pretty sure your local hardware/nappa wouldnt have a replacement for them. Carefully pull back starting at en edge, and youll see them pushed into the drilled holes of the body.. it helps to have a small philips screwdriver to give you a little leverage underneath, they take some work.. but they will literally pop out quite quickly once you get the proper system down.. The first flare I took off took me about 6 or 7 minutes working and prying.. the last one took under a minute due to me knowing just how to work on it then.




Now, they are all off!





Took them out back, scrubbed them real good with some clean water and a cleaning agent.. and letting them sit to dry.






Next step, after the fenders have been cleaned up and dried, is to take some sanding paper and begin to work on the little burs and scrapes from the rugged use of these flares... I personally hit the hardware store and picked up 2 packs of GatorGrit Assorted Grit packs.. a large size, and a small size, they run just under 3 bucks apiece. They come with 40, 60, 100, 150, and 220 grit sandpaper which will be perfect for working on the plastics.

 

And just a heads up, I'm down here squatting down next toehe fireplace getting all the burrs off of it with 60 grit sandpaper, then roughing it up a notch with some 100 grit, a light rough up only with the 100 grit. You can definitely feel the difference from teh smooth finish to a nice sandpapered finish, the primer will hold up perfectly on this :-D I am snapping pictures here and there, just whiling away until i can get it into the barn and really star the painting process.. I plan on leaving them off my truck for several days so they can dry properly, I dont want anymishaps when it comes to putting things on my truck :-)

 

Oh, bother.. *sigh* So I remember my brother asking me a month and a half ago if he coudl use soem of my primer.. I figured he used the grey, adn not my flat black primer.. so yeah, I'm short 2 cans, heading out to Walmart.. so I'll be back in an hour and a half or so, pickign up some food whiel I'm out there.



For an update, I've got all fenders in teh barn, prepped, sanded, cleaned off again, and the first coat of primer is on them.

 

nice.

Maybe I should do a log showing how i am going to ruin a perfectly good set of edge flares....

 

Little late-night shot for you :-)

1 Coat of Primer under for bonding/scratch reasons, and three coats of Krylon Flat Black applied with an experienced hand.. gives you this:




Going to give it about an hour or so to dry up (This paint is a fast drying style) then goign to start hitting it with some Matte clearcoats :-)

You shoudl have seen these before I ever worked on them, poor thigns were all scratched up, Im tempted to hit the sides of my truck with some touch up paint too.. have a habit of getting into underbrush that doesnt really like vehicles *doh* :-D



Edit: heres a sample of the scratching on the fenders I was talking about up top... even after sanding them down, they are still deep enough to be noticeable through all the layers so far.. the clearcoat will do a great deal in helping, but thats why you dont go through crazy underbrush

 

lol, If all else fails, drop em off with some paint and I can get em done for ya -laughs-

I was almsot looking at buying some brand new ones to paint up.. but eesh, its EXPENSIVE for a set of flares :-( over 240 bucks jsut for the rears!!!

 

DANG! I'm either going to repaint my stock ones, actually sand them this time. lol. Or.....bedline a set of EDGE or stock XLT ones. I don't know yet.

 

You've inspired me once again! I'm gonna do mine soon, color match em to my truck!

 

Only problem with bedlining.. I actually was going to do this, until i realized.. that it does look good for the first few months, but they fade.. even with UV protectant sealant.. and the roll on stuff tends to peel away after a while.. and with the abuse the road and rocks does to our fender flares.. I might advise against actually bedlining them.. a good prep and paint job on these shoudl make them do wonders :-D

 

I have rattle can bedliner on my front bumper.......has been on there for a year and there hasn't been much fade.

I'm like John Kerry right now....i'm flipper flopping between repaint or Line-X.

 

Any suggestions for Clear coats? I'll be using a gloss CC, but I'm talking like brands, anything that'll hold up against the elements best? I'll be using a gray primer as well, to help keep the color in the same range!

 

I've had my fender flares painted for the past few years and I used the plastic specialty paint from Krylon (Fusion). It does wear off if you scrape your flare wheeling or something but is pretty durable. I don't know how well regular spray paint will hold or last even with a primer coat. Plastics are designed to resist things which is why paint does not stick to them often, depending on the material. If your primer and regular spray paint works then fine, but i'd recommend Krylon Fusion or another plastic-specialty paint.
Looks good though, good job.
I didn't bolt my flares back or, heck I didn't even put clips back on them. I just put them back on using the clips that are attached to the inside of the flares which pop into the fender and i've never had any problem with them coming off. Using bolts is way over powering in my opinion but if you want to use them go ahead, it works too.

 

Oh, it is the krylon fusion that I'm using :-) its the only type I woudl ever use for the flares for sure

 

Well see, I'm going to be color matching my truck...

Sand and prep for paint...

So what I'm going to do is first use adhesion promoter, one or two good coats.
Then I'll be adding a layer or 2 of the fusion plastic paint, but using the plastic primer as the coat of PAINT to stick to the flares initially.
Then I'll use the Dupli-Color paint with my color code to paint the flares with either 2 or 3 coats of paint.

PAINT ON PAINT = STICK ........................ GREAT SUCCESS!!!

Then follow up with a few coats of clear coat to finish it off.

 

Sounds like a darn godo plan!

Perhaps, if yoru looking to color match it... you might try sanding them with a real fine grit, putting 2 layers of primer on it, then sanding it again to smooth it out.. then start your layering process.. would give it an ultra clean smooth look that I'm sure you would be happy with :-)

 

All finished up with these by the way, took roughly 7 hours of nonstop work.. painting, waiting, painting, waiting.. etc..etc.. in total:
1 coat black primer
3 coats krylon fusion flat black
3 coats krylon matte clearcoat

and it gives you this:




Now, I wont put them on for another 3 days now.. going to let them properly harden so no random rocks decides to chip away at it soon as I toss them on

Next Project: The rear bumper plastic step piece.. and the front valance...

The front valance I am jsut goign to leave on the truck and roll it into the barn for a few days, I honestly dont feel liek taking it fully off, its a pain in the but to get back on with the repair fabricating I had to do to it this last winter when some deep snow decided it didnt like my valance

 

Looks great Mike! I gotta get started on mine!

 

It will look wierd as all heck fi I put them on and dont hit at least the Valance.. on the rear bumper step thing, I think i may actually get a quart fo herculiner to do that with, The problem with clearcoats and paint.. they get pretty slick, and I actually use that back there alot.. I'll have to take a peek at it sometime.


Thinking of color matching yours? Or perhaps going with a black? I think a DWB with black highlights (rear and flares) woudl look freakin fantastic!

 

Thinking about DWB flares, 2wd bumper, and rear bumper.....But I might hold off. I've got alot of black getting added....think it'll flow better with black bumpers and flares. But i dunno. lol....its up in the air. I just want to put my flares back on. lol.