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How to color match you ugly grey side skirts...
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Materials Needed:
- Regular toothbrush (don't plan on using it for your teeth any more)
- Hand-held kitchen/bathroom scrub brush
- Castrol Super Clean Degreaser/tough task cleaner
- Car Wax
- Car washing supplies
- Old washcloth (that you can throw away)
- Towel for drying off car
- A few rags
Disclaimer and things to note:
This should take a total of about 1-2 hours and cost only about $10 (if you have none of the above materials). You will want to attempt this task with your car parked on a surface that you don't care about (i.e. work parking lot, neighbor's driveway, etc) or you will want to lay down some plastic under the side skirt area of your car. I discovered that the Castrol Super Clean does nasty things to everything it comes in contact with, including your driveway, clothing, hands, paint, etc. That is why this is such an effective method for removing that UGLY grey paint that they (BMW) used to protect our cars from rock chips.
Once you have completed the job of removing the grey paint, you will either have to live with the risk of getting rock chips in the side skirts (which I find not very likely to happen), or you will want to get a can of clear coat car paint to spray on the skirts (don't wax it before you do that).
You will need to be somewhat gentle and need to heed my warnings about the nastiness of this stuff, or you could scratch the body-color paint that exists under the grey paint or leave the paint looking dull.
Instructions:
Start out by spraying the entire skirt with the Castrol Super Clean (CSC), using a generous amount, and being careful not to get it on the paint above the skirt. If you do get it on the paint, wipe it off with a damp rag. Once you have the skirt well saturated, start at one end and scrub with the kitchen brush in a circular motion. It usually takes a little time to get through the initial layer of grey, but once you do, it goes a lot faster. Scrub until you start seeing the body-color paint (BCP) come through. Once you can see a good amount of the BCP through the grey paint, move down the skirt and star scrubbing in the next area.
I recommend working in 8" sections. Each time you get through to the BCP, stop for a second, wipe off the area that you just worked on, and spray it again with the CSC. Now is also a good time to spray the rest of the skirt with more CSC. The idea is that the CSC works well when it has time to sit.
After you have worked on about half of the skirt with the kitchen brush, and you have good sized section where you can see the BCP through the grey, go back to where you started and work on the area with the toothbrush until you can see no more grey, just BCP. I recommend removing the jack-hole covers, not that they will get damaged, but it allows you to get the paint out of that hole better. Also, you can use the toothbrush to get into the corner, underneath the trim piece that creates the border between the skirt and the upper portion of the door.
When you get all of the grey paint off of a good 12" section of the skirt, give it one last spray with the CSC and wipe it with a clean, dry rag to avoid having the CSC damage your new BCP.
Continue working with the kitchen scrubber, spraying more CSC as you go, then finishing with the toothbrush. Wipe often, the areas that you have worked on with a clean towel. If you need to get a little more rubbing action to get the grey paint off, you can spray a generous amount of CSC on an old washcloth and rub away.
When you are satisfied that you have removed all of the grey paint, wash the lower half of the side of the car just like you would normally wash your car. That way, you remove all of the CSC, including above the skirt, where you may have accidentally sprayed some. Dry the car and apply a couple coats of a good car wax. I used Meguiar's. YOUR DONE!!!
What now:
The olny thing left is to paint the jack-hole covers and take care of the bumpers. Since these pieces are made out of grey plastic, the above method will not work on them. I used body-colored bumper paint that is made by Dupli-Color and is available in limited colors at most autopart chain stores. More colors may be available on-line. If you do not want to paint them yourself, you could remove the bumpers yourself and take them the bodyshop to be painted. Since they are off the car (and you could easily do the pre your self), they would probably spray it pretty cheap.
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M3 (M-Tech) Side Skirts Installation
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Model : |
BMW, 3 - Series (E36) 1991-99
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Category : |
Exterior - Side skirts
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... the bottom of the skirt. Don't drill the bottom using the template. Mine didn't line up very good. Read on for a way to get the holes exactly right and save some time. After raising the rear, take off the rear tire. You might've noticed on the template, that you'll have to drill 2 more holes on the rear wheel-well side of the skirt. The front ones don't have those, so the rear wheels are the ...
(more)
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Posted : |
26 October 2004
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Author : |
Filip Malkov
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