Will this look awful (painting advice)?

[ILikeCake]

I've been fixing up an mx5 at a glacial pace. Mechanics pretty much sorted, and I'm now onto the paintwork.

Paint is in pretty good nick apart from two areas. The headlight.



And the rear bumper.



As I can remove both from the car I was thinking of having a go myself with a rattle can. Has anyone done similar? I'm worried the colour difference will look naff.

[sociopath]

Get the colour mixed to match the car as it is now and not what it was when it was new and it should be fine.

[WhatamIgettingmyselfinto]

If you are competent with a rattle can you can get good results, however being red the paint may have faded so colour match might not be great.

[tim-b]

I wonder if you might get away with just repraying the lacquer on the headlight cover? It might be worth trying first to avoid the colour match issues, although I wonder if the patch where the lacquer has failed would be faded differently to the rest...

The colour match of the rear bumper probably won't be too obvious (as long as it's close) since it's not flush with the rest of the car.

I'd have a go, I repainted a headlight cover with rattle cans and it wasn't 100% but unless you were looking for paint defects you wouldn't notice...be warned that the headlight cover can be a PITA to get off on earlier cars as they use philips head screws which seem like they're painted on and round instantly, I used a dremel to cut a slot then an impact driver (the manual type you hit with a hammer) to finally get the screws out.

[ILikeCake]

Thanks for the tips!

I'll give it a go and post up the finished pics for your amusement.

[ILikeCake]

Am pretty pleased with results of the headlight. Damn sight better than it was:



Next job is the wing mirrors. Happened to see a MK4 the other day and noticed they have black mirrors.



Am now considering painting black to limit any dodgy colour matching. Thinking it would match the black stonechip stripe. I struggle to picture these things though. Any thoughts?

[griffdude]

That’s much better- vast improvement . My only comment is that black mirrors won’t match the tan hood, but red mirrors do match the bodywork.

[HighwayToHull]

I seem to remember, back in the dim and distant past, spraying a pair of Mk 1 door mirrors in satin black and it worked fine.

[TVRees]

ILikeCake said:

......they have black mirrors .....

.................................. wait a second .....................

What a great idea !
The green paint is matt and fading on my mirrors, so its decided I'm going to paint them black