When I bought my CRV the drivers side fender had paint cracking at the front. I didn't know why- so as I was working on my build I decided while I had the front apart it would be a good time to remove the fender and see what was going on. I found that the reason for the paint cracking was that this was previously damaged- someone ground down the metal too far and basically created a hole- which they filled with bondo. The bondo failed, and the panel started to try and rust underneath- cracking the paint as the corrosion spread. I was contemplating filling this in with my tig-welder, and re-finishing the metal. I normally work on cars that are harder to find parts for- and CRV fenders are (relatively) cheap, so I just bought a replacement online.



this is what I had beforehand (all that was visible to me)



This is what was underneath


I could tig-weld this in an re-finish the metal, but the time it would take wasn't worth it

 

Here you can see first I installed the fender to make sure everything fit good. Then once I was happy it would work- I painted it in my paint booth. I used Dupont Chromabase matched to the factory "electron blue" and then USC clearcoat. It's not perfect but good enough for this car. I am happy with the color match. Keep in mind, my hood is slightly faded from the car coming from California where it was beaten up by the sun. I try to put the clearcoat on slow and thick to get a deep gloss but every now and then I get some dry spots that I have to wet sand and polish.