Scratch repair, Fixing a bare-metal scratch. Options

[Palmy]

G'day 6gc'ers I need painting advice!

My 6gc has an extremely deep 30cm (12") gouge in the rear fender <insert embarrassing story with flimsy excuses here>. Now I'd like to try my hand at repairing it myself, however I've never done anything like this before so Im after some advice before I ruin it even more.

The area around the scratch has been repainted twice before, once by the previous owner and once professionally after a nasty vandalism incident which can be seen here. As a result the paint around the scratch is extremely thick, about 2mm from the surface of the surrounding paint to the steel underneath and another 1mm into the steel.

After doing some reading on the subject I've come up with the following plan.
1. Wet sand the area with 100-grit down to bare metal.
2. Fill the gouged steel with bondo.
3. Sand progressively finer 200 - 400 - 800 grit.
4. Apply primer.
5. Apply paint + wet sand with 1000 grit.
6. Repeat step 5 untill new paint is level with surrounding paint.
7. Apply clear coat, wet sand with 2000 grit, buff and polish.
8. Enjoy the satisfaction of having robbed a body-shop of their exorbitant fee.

I know colour matched paint can be purchased in spray cans from auto-shops, will these be suitable for this application, or will a full spray-gun set up be required?
Does this little plan sound right to those with painting experience? Feel free to laugh at my noob-ness and point me in right direction if I'm way off the mark.

Many thanks,
Palmy.

This post has been edited by Palmy: Jan 18, 2011 - 9:58 AM

[CelicaHD2]

To give you an idea visually...search on YouTube for a guy called "Jimmo4life...he has done a great video with info subtitles of doing such a repair.

You can use rattle cans for small jobs like this...the secret to paint colour matching is blending the new paint into the existing old paint. This will help hide the repair edges.

For the filler (bondo)...after applied start sanding with 80grit, then 120grit up to 240grit. Don't go much finer otherwise the primer will not have a "key" to grip onto.

Sand primer using a "guide coat"...this will ensure your primer doesn't have any pin holes you may have missed. Start using 320grit and work up to 500grit.

Apply paint...do not sand between layers otherwise you will see the scratches after clear coating. You can use a "tack rag" to help remove any bits.

Apply clear coat...wet sand with 2000grit, 2500grit and buff out. Don't press too hard here otherwise you will put deep scratches into clear.

Just make sure you use a quality clear coat otherwise you will have future shrinking, delamination, etc.

Give me a few mins and I will put up some pics of the process I went through when fixing a scratch on my Wifeys car.

This post has been edited by CelicaHD2: Jan 18, 2011 - 12:28 PM