I am sure this is common knowledge among veteran DIYers, but I have a story to make sure the BEWARE OF INSTANT CHROME sticks in our minds forever!..... and my multicolored hands

I decided to paint my grill chrome the other day and I didn't do my research like I should have and bought a $5 can of Duplicolor instant auto chrome, but when I painted it on, it looked kind of chrome when it was wet but once it dried it was actually a silver/gray. At first I was happy and thought WOW $5 for a color like that? Meh, why not... so I kept it on there. A few days later, it started looking super dull, and when I rubbed the grill the paint came off in a fine dust on my finger. And so scraped the grill down slightly with a sanding sponge and painted it again, only to have the same result.

So I decided to try one more time, and this time to clear coat it. So I explained to my parents why I am painting my grill again for the third time and with a lot of strange (your crazy) looks, I went outside again in the cold but sunny day, and painted everything over, I rushed a little bit so it didn't come out too good, because after I washed it, I didn't dry it completely so there were little paint bubbles with water underneath but all I needed to do was push on the bubble with a piece of napkin and the water got sucked up and the paint flatted out. So when it dried I shook up the clear coat and sweeped over the entire grill and with only one spray the whole thing had dark spots all over the entire thing was peeling off! I stopped before I went over it again but thanks to the clear coat shooting out like a jet stream for some reason, my paint was ruined because of the pressure of the spray and the clear coat itself!

I knew my mom was going to give me the "I told you so" speech, and the "I told you never to mess with your car" speech, and so I quickly sanded down the still sort of wet paint and clearcoat and wiped it all down. But I did not know that normal paint does not stick to the Duplicolor instant chrome so when I tried to paint it white to avoid getting in trouble the whole thing like melted! The clear coat still had an invisible layer where it landed so the places where the clear coat did not land had a good white layer of paint while the rest got mixed with the chrome below and worse of all I was out of time since it was getting dark, I was out of white paint, and my chrome paint was spitting out air so it was out.........

I had to go to school with the FFFFFed up grill for a day, and just today I being a stubborn son of a gun, did the research and bought another can of.................. CHROME! But its the Duplicolor Metal Specks paint which I could not find anything bad about online, and the guy at Schucks said it was okay with clear coat. But I couldn't do it at home so I asked my friends to do it at their house and managed to sand down part of it with my sanding sponge that wore to only a sponge with more than half the grill UNSANDED so I used some steel wool in its place... BAD IDEA it left scratches that were still visible after putting on the primer but the paint covered them up luckily and thankgoodness my friends dad is a professional auto body painter, and when I told him what happened, and after he saw the "sanding" work I had done he laughed so hard he said he would do it for me.

So........... I got my grill professionally (sort of) painted for free and I am crossing my fingers that the can of paint that I bought which is more expensive than the previous will stand up, and I am going to spray the paint on some rocks and then see if the clearcoat will peel it. So please learn from my mistake, DON'T buy "chrome" at your local auto store and don't go for cheap paint if you want it to last. ALWAYS and I do mean ALWAYS!!!! take your time and do everything neatly and sand EVERYTHING. DO your work away from home if you have anti-DIY parents! ALWAYS paint on a warm day! Make sure to get to know a auto body painter and be friends in case something horrible happens as backup! ALWAYS try to test paints and clearcoats on some rocks or something before using it on your work. DO RESEARCH BEFORE PAINTING! I learned from this experience that laquers and enamals are different, and that in a certain order they mix and in another order they don't! And for GOD SAKES don't buy cheap paints!!!!!!

I have no pictures of the EFFed up grill, because I don't want to have my car be put on some website and spread forever and ever.

Also please share your stories too because one day in the future when someone decides to do the exact thing and search it on the forums they will see our thread and it will prevent them from being as dumb like I was.

Thankyou for your time.......

..................making the world safer, one mistake at a time.

P.S. I learned the proper painting and preparation techniques from my friend's dad, and now I am a better painter than before... and the picture in my signature is of the grill when I painted it, and before it started rubbing off

 

Interesting...

 

Chrome spray paint.
Seriously, what sort of results were you expecting?

Your attempt to repair it is what resulted in the mess you now have on your grill.

Proper prep is the key. I've actually used chrome spray paint and had good results with it. Keep in mind again, it's paint, not real chrome.

 

try to avoid working on your car besides adding gas to it.

 

All you had to do was say, "I suck at painting." You could have saved 45 minutes of typing. Lol, thats why those cans of paint have directions on the side. Painting plastic is never a one or two step process. There's alot of prep work and patience involved.

 

Interesting read, glad you learned something; and for the guy who said you could have just posted that "I suck at painting". He obviously learned something from his mistake and wanted/needed to get it off his chest. Just be thankful that he doesn't "suck at typing" or proper sentence structure like some people here do.

 

man wish i could have saved that grill. i wish i had an oem white grill

 

Cliff notes?

 

Easy-Off(yellow can) oven cleaner works good at taking paint off without damaging the plastic. It may be a little more work but its kinder to the plastic surface. I painted my interior trim pieces, didnt like the color and removed it with oven cleaner and an old toothbrush a few times. Cheaper than buying all new pieces. The chrome paint?...yeah that stuff sucks. Sorry to hear about your troubles man, but some of us just have to learn from experience, until we get the proper techniques down.

 

Oh no guys I didn't ruin my grill haha. I had it fixed. A day later.

Well, it WAS ruined for a day or two, but after that it got fixed

The reason I posted a story was because like some people I'll assume that if they can't do it, I probably can. So if they read a full detailed story about it they'll probably not do it to prove that they can.

OH! And to the person who said "what were you expecting from chrome paint" like I said, I hadn't really researched and did not know that chrome paint was not actually chrome. The color indicator cap was chrome and so I thought that the paint was going to be chrome also. I even asked the guys at Shucks and they were all like... the cap is the color you get. So I trusted them and bought the paint.

 

Epic

 

At least you learned something.

 

Thankyou! Had to tell SOMEONE you know? hahahah
Also its fun to write about my major failures and see what people have to say

 

Yeah thankyou! I learned the proper preparation techniques and such from my friends dad. I didn't know that there were so many steps needed before you even prime the object! And oven cleaner!? I would have never thought! I thought about using gasoline one time LOL, but I know the consequences of using something like gasoline on paint and then trying to paint over it again.

Thankyou for the comment.

 

it would've been a bit easier to see your point if you had added pics of it...........too much reading............


do it once-do it right.

 

Yeah I'll show you the finished product haha, tomorrow! And also I didn't have my camera handy at the time since I was not at home. I follow your philosophy too, I try to mentally prepare the best I can but lack of experience ruins it......... and also bad paint and chemically reactive clear coats Appreciate the comment, next time I am going to do it once and do it right haha

 

Haha, I was messing with him..hence the "LOL" after what I said. Trust me, if you want some horrible paint stories, I can make Leo look like Chip Foose.

 

Please share! I am sure I am not the only one who screw up hahahaha

 

Lol, one of my first paint jobs was when i just started driving. I painted engine parts and stuff in the engine bay with $.97 Walmart paint. I went about 7 coats deep. You know what happends to 7 coats of paint when you add in engine heat and humidity? Yeah, not pretty.

 

Haha sorry to hear that! I mean sanding everything back down in the engine compartment must be a pain!!! I mean the grille is already a pain trying to sand down.

Now that I read this thread over, I think I must have been high on paint when I wrote this stuff hahahaha

 

Still waiting...

 

Whoopsie, going now. Right now its 6:54PM going out right now................... haha

 

Alright here they are! And sorry my car was still wet from the rain just like 30 minutes ago.


[Here is where I tried to show the blemishes but its really hard to see since my digital camera STINKS!]


[Here is the overall picture, its not exactly what you would expect a 3-coat of bad quality paint and a clearcoat meltdown plus bad sanding and a load of quick rush work to look like, but it turned out pretty good. And none of the paint is rubbing off, and the clear coat does not react with the paint WHOOO!]

 

No offense, but it looks kinda cheap IMO.

 

Haha I can't go back now! I wanted to get it chromed to make it look like steel, which is why I started the whole fiasco. Meh, too late now

Unless you have a chrome grill you would like to donate to my cause

 

You could have gotten 1 off eBay.

 

www.car-part.com for a chrome grille.

 

Ebay ones are about $13.00

 

DARN IT!! Thankyou guys, I should have turned to Ebay first! And good God! They are charging $50+ for a chrome grille from junk yards! Haha Ebay it is then!