It took a week longer than I planned, and many more cans of paint, but I finally finished the hood. I still need to polish it, but it looks pretty good.

The hood on the BMW has one of the worst paint jobs I’ve ever seen. It’s like the history of paint. I think there’s at least 4 layers, the top coat being a very cheap, very thick respray one of the previous owners had done after something fell on the hood. The paint was burned in several places, and had about a dozen significant chunks missing. The entire leading edge was one chip after another. While washing the car on Saturday, the water pressure from the hose was enough to dislodge a big chunk of paint. When I first bought the car, I painted the larger chips in as best I could with touch up paint as seen in the photo above. After I finished the Aero Grille on the MINI, I thought I’d try to fill one of the holes.

It was fairly easy to clean out and fill. Once I got to sanding, I started to wet sand out some scratches.

Which of course lead to more grinding.

Which lead to more filling.

At some point you just have to stop or you’ll go nuts. I’ll never get the thing to look like new. And with a new hood running only about $300, it’s just not worth it to try. It can’t look worse than when I started so why not try to prime it up and paint it and see what happens.

I got the first coat of primer on last night. It still needs to be sanded and there are a couple of rough spots to work out, but it’s about 90 percent there.