Prepare for Painting
0:00 - 4:51- Wet sand the entire part with 500-grit sandpaper to scuff the surface.
- Follow up with 800-grit sandpaper for a smoother finish.
- Clean the surface thoroughly.
The Aerosol Preferred Kit includes Primer, Colorcoat, Clearcoat, and a Wax & Grease Remover Wipe—everything you need to repaint auto parts or repair a large scratch. We recommend having sandpaper and a tack cloth on hand for best results.
Hi! Uri from TouchUpDirect. I want to talk to the Raptor crowd today.
Ford F-150 Raptor folks. It's really common for Raptors to get this trail rash on the fender flares. We've developed a color to fix that.
My personal vehicle here, I scratched up when I kind of scuffed into someone down in Baja. Sorry, Jeremiah, Eddie XO, but we're going to use the TouchUpDirect Aerosol Kit today to fix that damage. As always check your color with the test card first.
For this project, we're going to remove the fender flare. In a recent trip to Baja. This truck got scraped up with trail rash and actually bumped up against another truck.
These are just bolted on. So it's easy enough to remove I'm going to pop this off and then the project will be to paint it For the Raptor, we're going to assess the situation, what damages it's incurred. There's a few deeper scratches here.
I looked this part up after this happened and it was over $300 from Ford. So I figured, well, it's going to get beat up again. So I might as well just fix it.
Ah, this is Magnetic, which is a common Ford color, but what's uncommon is that it is matte finish. So we had this develop the correct clear coat for the part and for the color. There's quite a lot of this color on a Raptor.
It's all the gray trim. So this will work on any 2017 and newer Raptor and possibly the first gen as well. To get started, I'm going to just dry sand, some of these areas where it's gouged, just to see if we need to do any putty, then we'll, we'll move to that.
The reason I'm dry sanding is simply because I don't want to mess up my paper here for the sake of the video. You can also wet sand. I'm using 500 for this.
There's definitely some gouges here that I think the putty would be worthwhile on. We'll be doing the TouchUpDirect putty there. After sanding with 500, there's a few scratches here that just aren't going to stand out.
So I'm just going to use some of the TouchUpDirect Putty and a little spatula here. That'll fill in that scratch. We'll sand that off.
I'm not too worried if I get some extra on there, it all sands off very easily. Okay, I'm gonna let the putty dry then sand it smooth. I'm gonna wet sand it with some 500.
Just trying to make it nice and smooth. Okay, that feels pretty good. So now I'm just going to scuff the rest of the part, um, to get it ready for paint.
Let it dry. Clean it. Let it dry.
Apply some primer here and then we'll apply color. For this part, I'm not terribly worried about making sure this is all perfect down here. This is behind the rear wheel and it really gets beat up hard.
It's always going to get chipped up and nicked up. So I'm not too worried about it. I'm just going to, I'm going to paint over it and clear it.
So it'll be completely refinished, but I'm not concerned about it. It's not as cosmetically obvious as the other areas that we wanted to fix up. Now I'm going to switch to 800 sandpaper because I sanded a lot here with 500.
So I'm gonna switch to 800 to rub all the sanding scratches out and then it will be ready for primer. After I finished wet sanding it. I washed it again with Dawn dish detergent.
Now I'm going to use the wax and grease wipe and wipe the whole thing down just for one last cleaning to make sure there's no residual of any type of chemicals or anything on the part. After the wax and grease is dry, we use the tack cloth. I'm only going to focus in the areas I'm going to be spraying the primer at the moment, which is where I put the putty and these areas right here, where it's down to bare plastic, just going to put a light coat of primer there, let it dry.
Another light coat and then wet sand that nice and smooth before we paint the entire part. Now that the primers dry, tack it again quickly. Ready for the next coat of primer.
Then going to focus on any areas I may have missed on this coat. Now that the primer is dry, we're ready to wet sand it. I'm going to use 1500 to make it nice and smooth.
Um, there's a few small scratches still showing up here, but most of those will sand out and I'm not really concerned about this looking 100% perfect. These scratches will hardly be noticeable. This truck gets used hard, so I just want it to, to not be visibly damaged.
Okay. It's time to clean it up again. I went ahead and grabbed a block of wood just to prop this up so I could paint the edges nicely.
Anything around the home that you can prop something up with to raise it. And you're able to get a better uniform coat of color is really helpful. So I've cleaned the part after sanding it.
It's nice and smooth now. Feeling on the part here to see if there's any roughness where the primer transitions to color. It's all very nice and smooth.
So that tells me we're ready to apply color. Let's go over it with the tack cloth. Again, try to eliminate any dust.
So the color is Ford Magnetic Metallic color code J7 ,but if you look for the color anywhere, you're never going to find it because it's a matte finish. I don't know why Ford hasn't made it more readily available, but we did develop the color for it. So that it'll match really nicely to the truck.
And the clear coat will match. Okay. First coat complete.
We're going to let that dry to a nice matte uniform finish. About 10 to 15 minutes and apply another coat. Okay.
The first coat is dry. We're just going to wipe very lightly with the tack cloth again. Pick up any residual dust.
Now we're going to apply the second coat. That's it. Okay.
Code is dry. We're just going to wipe very lightly with the tack cloth. Again, pick up any residual dust.
The clear coat we're going to use on this is a matte finish. There's about five variations of matte finish, and it's pretty much a perfect match, a perfect reflection and dullness. So the matte finish clear is just like applying any other clear, you just need thorough coverage.
I've already inspected the entire part to make sure that the color coat covered all the primer. We're just looking for good coverage here. We don't need a ton of clear coat.
Um, maybe two coats max. Initially. It's going to look like it's glossy until it dries.
First coats on we'll let that dry. Coat is dry. We're just going to wipe very lightly with the tack cloth.
Again, pick up any residual dust. Okay, we're ready for our next coat of clear coat. This dried really nice and uniform.
We want to put one more coat on just for extra protection. It's a common misconception that more paint and more clear coat is better. It's not really the case over time.
It can affect the longevity of the paint. If you have too much paint or clear coat. So we're going to put one more coat on, let it dry.
Then it's ready to be mounted back on the Raptor. Take a quick look, make sure I have good coverage. It's easy to see before it dries.
We have a little bit here. I'm going to hit it a little more. That's it we'll let that dry and mount it back up.
Now that the paint's dry, we're ready to bolt this back onto the Raptor. For this project, we use the TouchUpDirect Aerosol Primer, color, or base coat and TouchUpDirect Clear Coat Aerosol. We also use the TouchUpDirect Putty.
Sandpaper, tack cloth, and wax and grease remover.