Paint cracks...

Well, not sure what to expect when I try my hand at "fixing" something like this. I'm guessing there is a good chance that some of that paint around the cracks will just flake off if I sand it. But I guess I really don't have anything to lose now. This happened while my car was out at Aaron Scott's shop. He told me the hood dropped while the car was on the dyno and it impacted the airbridge, causing the cracks. Apparently the hood struts had gotten broken somewhere along the way, as I had to replace them myself when I got the car back home.

Oh yeah, and while I am looking closer at the paint job looking for rock dings, it's pretty aggravating to see cat claw scratches that apparently came from Aaron Scott's cats as well. Connie and I saw my car, as well as others there at his shop, with muddy cat paw prints all over the top surfaces of the cars several times when we stopped out there. I can tell on my own car that those cats were having problems getting purchase on that slippery surface when they jumped up on it.... I sure wish he had used the car cover I left out there with the car. Probably would have helped save the paint finish from all the water spotting as the car sat outside as well as the cats.

I tried to get decent pics of the scratches in the paint, but it seems to be rather difficult to do that. I have to have glare from a light source just right, and even then, the flashes will tend to wash out the contrast. I tried a few pics without the flashes, but ambient light is pretty low, and camera (actually my hands) shake too much. Oh well, I got some pics that are passable...









Maybe I'll try again later on to see if I can capture those scratches better.

The cracked areas will have to be re-sprayed but the scratches can be corrected from what I see in the pics.

Yeah, I tried to play around with the cracks, but I couldn't do much with them. The scratches seemed to come out pretty well, but honestly there are some that are kind of deep and I'm afraid of taking off all of the clear in order to get them out. I actually did that on a deep scratch on the passenger side quarter panel. It's not really noticeable, though, unless the light hits it at just the right angle. Sooner or later I'm going to get the car repainted, but I'm putting it off as long as I can. Thankfully I don't have to worry about rust on the body panels.

Maybe before I do that I'll try using the Langka paint chip correction kit using clear coat to see if I can fill in those deeper scratches. I played around with it and the Dr. Colorchip kit somewhat when I was trying my hand at wet sanding a while back and got some decent results with the zillions of small rock chips. So that might work on the scratches well enough.

Honestly, though, the trunk lid is a real mess. Not sure what happened, but SOMETHING happened while my car was at South Georgia Corvette. I know Aaron Scott has cats there and I've personally seen foot prints on several of the cars there, including mine. But it looked like about a zillion cats were wrestling on my trunk lid to get the quantity of small scratches that are still there. I actually quit with my wet sanding experiment in frustration when I got to the trunk lid.

And to think that you brought your car to this guy to have it made better! :banghead: