Damage Assessment

Since today was the warmest day in quite a while, Sara and I checked out the extent of the overspraying damage.

First though, we got rid of the old back glass. We need the room to work.

We used foaming cleaner and cleaned the dust off the door jambs and trunk area so we could get a better look at the paint job.

This is the paint drip that started it all. This is on the driver side rocker panel, towards the front of the car. 

There is also a series of drips on the driver side rocker panel towards the back of the car.

Question for anyone that knows: I did not treat the area between the pinch welds and the rocker panel with POR-15 as I did the underbody, because I thought this would be painted with the car. Is it normal for this not to be painted?

Question for anyone that knows: Should I be concerned about the dent in the center of this picture at the bottom of the rocker panel? Should I have him fix this and smooth it out?

Here is the overspray on the driver side rear wheel well. Even the fuel filler neck got coated. These were treated with POR-15 and were gloss black. I wanted the distinction of having the only KITT (that I know of) with gloss black wheel wells. I am going to demand that he paint these gloss black with the body of the car now. He knew I wanted the wheel wells gloss black, so I am especially ticked off about this.

Here is the top part of the hatch.

I chose not to have the front windshield removed for paint. This is how he primed this area for paint. Please let me know if you see anything amiss.

The orientation is a little weird on this picture, but this is the driver side A-pillar.

The orientation is a little weird on this picture, but this is the passenger side A-pillar.

Passenger side rocker panel. This is how I expect the driver side to look. Please let me know if you see anything I missed.

This is the passenger side wheel well. This goes beyond overspray to the point of being solid gray.

Sara and I moved the car to the middle of the garage and I jacked up the passenger side first.

Here are pictures of the overspray on the passenger side, starting from the back and working my way towards the front of the car.

You can see in this picture that the overspray did not make it as far as the transmission tunnel. Although it is dusty, you can see the transmission tunnel is still gloss black. The ENTIRE underbody was gloss black like this.

Now for the driver side.

Even my new polyurethane end links are coated!

This picture was taken just behind the driver side front wheel, looking down the underbody of the car.

Over the last week I gathered suggestions of what to use to remove the oversprayed primer. I tried five methods suggested to me. The first was brake cleaner.

Here is the result of applying, letting the brake cleaner sit for a minute, and then scrubbing.

Next I tried rubber rejuvenator.

Here is the result of applying, letting the rubber rejuvenator sit for a minute, and then scrubbing.

Mario told me use my wife's nail polish remover. So Sara ran upstairs and got her extra moisturizing nail polish remover, along with a few cotton balls for effect.

Here is the result of applying, letting the nail polish remover sit for a minute, and then scrubbing.

Up next, lacquer thinner.

Here is the result of applying, letting the lacquer thinner sit for a minute, and then scrubbing.

Finally, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

After I scrubbed vigorously with the Magic Eraser, the primer is very, very clean, but definitely still there. I also tried this on one of the red parts with no success.

Here's our lineup. The brake cleaner and the nail polish remover worked the best. I think I may actually try acetone. On a side note, today is probably going to be the only day in a while warm enough to open the garage so I do not asphyxiate myself. Having the car primed in the winter turned out to be a super bad idea.

I figure based on what I have seen so far Mario caused a minimum of $2,500.00 worth of damage, based on POR-15, special order parts, supplies, and labor. Not to mention the heartache and stress. Sara almost cried when she saw all her hard work ruined by his [insert expletive here] actions.