Has anyone had success repairing paint starring

[lgordon]

Unfortunately this isn’t an idle curiosity question. Less than a month after getting my car road legal in the Seattle area (Bellevue, WA) I saw that I have one of the dreaded stars in the paint of my Roadster. I held off on addressing the damage until I had Alex’s Wheel Well Liners installed and tested. Now is the time to have it fixed.

I have an estimate from a highly rated local body shop to try filling the cracks and repairing the paint to minimize the damage but its not something they’ve actually done before. Not cheap! I’m prepared to have them do their best but if anyone has successfully repaired a paint star I’d love to hear how it was done.

134712

[Presto51]

Well your asking for a lot of assumptions to be made, without actually seeing what’s under the paint, but with a text book perspective, let’s go with the following:

Assuming that a rock did the damage from underneath, hitting hard enough to fracture the fiberglass, gelcoat, primer, paint, and clearcoat, the safest course of action might be:

Grind down the top side of the fender to fiberglass layer where the damage is.
Drill a hole at the end of each crack line, to stop the cracks from traveling.
Grind fiberglass a little deeper in the damage area, try to “V” out the cracks, then fill with glass mat, glass cloth
Sand the repair and repeat if necessary the above steps, achieving level surface to the rest of the fender.
Reinforce the damaged area underneath to regain strength in the damaged area.

A lot of folks will tell you that all those steps are not necessary, just grind down the damaged “star” area, fill with fiberglass reinforced body filler, finish off the body work to smooth level, prime , paint and done. Banking on that the “star cracks” don’t reappear and walk on you.

Good luck

Ron