Hey everyone, I was hoping maybe some of you guys could give me a rough idea how much work/cost it would be to repaint the rear hatch. I just installed the TRD rear sway bar and exhaust which came out pretty awesome minus the scratch. Long story short, me and some buddies were installing the TRD exhaust and had the car lifted and the hatch open. I'm laying on the floor checking to make sure everything is fine and then we decide to see how the exhaust sounds. While leaving the rear hatch open my other friend opens the garage while the other starts the engine. Next thing i hear them yell WHOA WHOA hold on. Engine starts rear hatch gets long scratch along the bottom side. Its about a mm wide and 2-3 inches long. Its sorta nasty. I'm thinking about using touch up paint, but its the grey metallic and my last car the touch up paint just never matched well enough. I'm thinking about calling some body shops tomorrow, but I'm almost certain they'll want to see the car to make an estimate.
I'm thinking that they either would need to paint the whole rear hatch or just a portion and then blend the rest of the paint. Do any of you guys know how much that would run, particularly in the Pac Northwest. Also if anyone of you guys know a place that could do it relatively cheap, of course still quality work though. Please let me know
I'll get pics up. Probably after the car is fixed though haha.
Thanks
Ben

 

pics?

 

 

im pretty sure you wont need to repaint the entire hatch hahaha
there's a scratch removal DIY here somewhere.. try using that

 

touch up paint runs a pretty penny for the quantity you get, but thats all you need. go to toyota and pick it up

 

get that thing that the late billy mays pitches at night.... the scratch remover thingy.... it's like a "pen" that "paints" the scratch away... (supposedly it's an epoxy and it fills in the scratch and matches the paint.) check it somewhere

 

haven't heard anything about the billy mays product. Have seen it on tv, but haven't heard if it has been proven to work or not. anyone have any experience with it? I have ordered a touch up paint thing from my dealer. 15 bucks plus tax.

 

use a paint touchup pen, wetsand it, hit it with a highspeed and some compound. should come out ok.

 

Update: So heres the procedure i went with.
First i sanded down the scratch and removed any wax and made sure that everything was clean and ready to get painted. I dabbed paint into the scratch all the way through and waited 30 minutes to do a second coat. I then waited 8-9 hrs to let the paint dry. All the while 2000 grit sandpaper soaking in water. I then wetsanded the area over and noticed that the paint became more dull. It didn't seem as though the touch up paint was able to retain its normal color after being wetsanded. It became more "grey" dull looking. The pics are really not gonna do the best job, but they are the best that I could get. Do you guys have any other ideas?
Should i just not wet sand it and have it look really unfinished?

 

This one is with a new coat of paint on after having sanded the spot down again, I didn't want to wetsand this one over again because the paint doesn't match after wet sanding it. I'm thinking the paint there is probably really thin now. I can't really afford to keep trying over and over again. What do you guys think?

 

in order for it to look ok, you have to follow all the steps that was said in the above post...

 

Um you mind explaining further? I have done all the steps in the above post....
I have no idea what you are talking about

 

you said you sanded first... i said use the paint first.


clean the area, paint, build it up every so slightly, wetsand, compound, polish. would work best if u knew how to use a highspeed and some good compound.

honestly it looks like u have the paint built up too thick now.

the paint looks dull bc uve wetsanded it. it makes it dull, thats why u have to compound it to smooth it back out and get rid of the dullness and scratches. i would go with a medium grit compound, polishing will remove the minor scratches the compound leaves. throw some wax over it when your done.

done correctly should do a good job, you would probably be the only one to ever notice it since u knew it was there.

edit: also, you should never sand before you clean. if u did it exactly like you said you did and sanded then tried to remove any wax... sanding can push the unwanted material (ie. wax) deeper into the paint and smaller pores making it difficult to remove.

 

FlintC thanks for the reply. I did indeed sand it before cleaning it, I thought that it would make for a better surface for the paint. I realize I probably did end up pushing some debris around down there, but I then went over a number of times with a cleaning solvent and cloth to try my best and clean it out. Either way, I believe that is too late now anyhow.

One question i do have though is after everything was completed the dullness I'm referring to is just the touch up paint itself. I used a rubbing compound (actually just Meguire's ScratchX) to buff all the little scratches out, but that did not bring the touch up paint back to color. I am curious as to whether or not a porter cable would make a difference. I figured that ScratchX would do the trick, but after a number of passes, the paint still looks more "grey". I then tried to do it all over without the wet sanding to see whether the color match would be better leaving a less noticeable scratch. The color seems to match way better, but as you can see in the picture, the surface just looks awful.

Thanks again for your input
Bennyboy