Ok so I’ve owned this civic for about 10 years now and it’s been an excellent car. Maintenance wise everything is done and it rides better than my brothers 2015 civic honestly. So since I’m at home for a little bit during this stay at home order it gives me time to repaint my civic. I’m gonna be doing it in stages. I’m not quite ready to weld in my new wheel wells cause I just got done doing a huge job on a Nissan truck that was rusted pretty bad around the wheels. So I need a break on metal work. Since painting is super easy and fun I’m gonna do some of that first. My goal is to have everything done except the rear quarters painted within the next couple of days. The only thing I’m out of currently is a 3M finishing glaze (for little dents) so I gotta see if my auto parts store is open so I can get some. I’ll be posting pictures of my progress so people can see what I’m doing and maybe get inspired to do some small projects on their cars! Hope you guys enjoy!

 

So here’s the before pictures. Had a little rust where the hood levers Mount. So I sanded that down to shiny metal. Under neath the hood was a little greasy so I used dawn soap and scrubbed it about 5 times to make sure it was all gone. I scuffed the entire underside and super cleaned it.

 

Call me crazy but my “catalyst” sticker was too shiny to peel off lol so I just taped it off along with my vin sticker and some warning sticker.


second picture is the hood all scuffed and dry ready for paint!

 

Base coat all done!

 

Clear coat finished. And stickers peeled!

 

Looks good! Was this rattle can or hvlp?

 

Looks like an EK hood?

 

Super cool that you didn’t mess up the emissions tag and other decals.

 

get er done!

 

its HVLP basecoat clearcoat.

 

man I’m glad you think so! I just didn’t think it was right to peel them off lol

 

yea 💪🏽👍🏽

 

Got the hood sanded down with my DA orbital sander. Sanded a couple small dents down to the metal and the second picture is with body filler sanded and I started to prime it but forgot to take a photo so I stopped priming and snapped one real quick lol


I was running out of daylight so I’m letting the primer dry overnight (1-2 hours dry time @70 degrees, with it being about 60 degrees here I figured I’d wait longer) so I figured just let it sit overnight and tomorrow it will be ready to block and finish painting.

 

umm it’s a 1997 DX 4 door. So is that an EJ?

 

yea EJ6

 

Put some filler on a couple small dents and started to sand the fenders since I couldn’t paint the hood yet. I’ve decided to paint the bumper last (I’ll remove it from the car when I’m ready to paint it)

Filled a couple dents in the passenger door as well. Any tricks on removing the body moldings (the black door guards) without removing the interior pieces of the door?


im excited about tomorrow to get the hod painted!

 

whats your paint setup?

 

What do you have to do differently to paint the plastic bumper coer?

AFAIK you need to pull the interior door panels to release the body moldings.

 

nothing fancy just a big compressor with a Home Depot husky HVLP gun, a PSI regulator, and a moisture catch

ppg Omni plus primer/paint/clear

 

ok got it thanks.

ive found that metal is harder to make look perfect compared to plastic. But long story short:

my car got stolen in September. The cops found it and arrested the guy. But he broke my window and my radio housing. So the insurance totaled it. Therefore I had to get the car inspected to get a salvage title. I had a hole in my bumper so I had to get it replaced. A parts car I bought for 200$ had a brand new black bumper on it.

so that one is on there now. I’m gonna pull the bumper and scuff it, sand it with 600 and then prime it and paint it like normal.

 

Nice, i was curious because i'm still fine tuning my setup for some DIY paint work hopefully beginning of summer this year.

 

cool. The most important is the air pressure regulator and the moisture catch I’d say. Everything else is pretty straight forward.

 

Got all the time pieces pulled off and sanded where little dents were so I could fill them with a small coat of body filler.

Driver side ready for paint!

Il

 

Got the hood all painted

 

Got the driver side done. I put a TON of clearcoat on this thing lol (well just 1 fog coat and 2 heavy coats of clear)