Headlight Covers Repainting

I started painting the headlight covers since they had some light chipping along the front edges where the original white paint was starting to show through. I was going to take them right off and do both sides but then determined it would be just as easy to just mask them off from the rest of the car and prime and paint them in place.

First I needed to prep the surface of the covers by going over each one with scuff pad. I know a lot of people use the grey scuff pad for this but I find with the sand-able primer I can get away with using the red scuff pad, its a little more or a coarser grade but the primer fills in the surface really well.

Once all sanded or I should say scuffed up it was time to mask off the covers from the rest of the car. Normally I use plastic drop sheet material for my masking but for small stuff like this and considering that it was an under the hood kind of area news print is more than good enough. I'm actually using flyers which are a little thicker paper.

Once all masked off it was time to give each headlight cover a good cleaning with some isopropyl alcohol to clean up and grease and dust. Then a going over with a tac cloth.

Once the primer was dry it was time to paint. I let the paint fully dry over night before putting on a few coats of clear coat. I'll let that dry over night as well so that way the clear coat is good and set before the wet sanding.

They look pretty shiny already with the clear coat applied. They will look even shiner when they are eventually wet sanded and then polished.















With the hood open I took the time to paint the edged of the scanner bar a matt black so it does not stick out as much. I just used my fine brush and brushed on some model paint as it's just a small area and that paint is pretty durable. I may eventually make some kind of plastic covers for those end pieces just to make the ends look a little neater, I'll see what I come up with and what looks good.