RIght then it’s been a while since we last updated you on the Freelander. Despite the lack of updates, believe it or not we have been productive!

Now the freelander is mechanically sound it was time to start to restore her to her former glory. The biggest thing dragging down the appearance of the Freelander was the bumpers. The previous owner had obviously attempted to restore them but done a poor job, obviously forgetting the first rule when painting its all in the preparation. Conciquently the paint was patchy flaking off and generally making the freelander looking a little unloved.

So as usual i went scouting round the internet to see what other people had done, and avoid making the same mistake as the previous owner. The majority of people sugested just using plastic polish such a back to black (uselesss stuff) or auto glyms bumper blackner (great stuff). But in our case with a poor paint job on top we needed a more drastic solution. Just a word of warning nearly everything we read said painting them yourself is a awful idea. A heat gun approach came up multiple times but one we got the bumpers back to plastic they where grey and the heat gun wasn’t going to work with the type of plastic, although this is a good solution if your type of plastic responds to this ( google this for more info).

So if your bumpers are in really poor condition this is how we went about restoring them, and the result we achieved. lill leave it up to you to judge the final finish, leave us a comment telling us what you think!

Step 1

Jet wash any easily removable paint.

As i said earlier painting is all in the prep and in our case there was a lot of prep needed. To remove the old paint we used a jet wash. This was working well but we found larger areas that wouldn’t budge no matter how much pressure was put on them.

Step 2

Bring the reinforcements.

After you have removed all the paint you can with the jet wash its time to bring in something to remove those stubborn bits of paint. The reason for not doing this from the start it purely cost oriented. To get the paint of without damaning the plastic underneath it turns out fairy power spray is excellent who knew. But as good as it is it is £3.70 a bottle and we used 5. Admittedly the Freelander has a lot on bumper work and smaller newer cars have a lot less plastic on so hopefully this is quicker process for you! But coat the plastics with it being careful not to get any on the paint (if your bumpers are still on the car) then leave for 20 mins and jet wash off.

NOTE: This takes a long time and is not a half an hour job. It took us the best part of 7 hours. I say us my partner in crime, had to leave to go shopping with the misses. I know no commitment ey 😉 But we’l leave that there.

Step 3

Get sanding

Its time to wack out the sand paper and get this surface keyed. We had our worries as the bumpers are a flecked surface and we wouldn’t be able to key it properly. We used some very fine grit to key the surface to give the paint something to adhere to. A friend of our who does body work suggested using scotch brite ( see our wonder wheels post to see some scotch brite ) and it turns out this does a great job too. A lot of body shops use scotch brite to get surfaces prepped for paint, top tip from us here at reviving cars.

Step 4

Mask off

This one pretty much explains itself. Make sure you use good quality tape so you don’t mark your paint and be careful you don’t want paint anywhere but the bumpers! Thanks to the friday add for the paper!

Step 5

Paint

After all this prep its finally time to start seeing some results for all the work you’ve put in. Now we only had access to rattle cans, but if you have a compressor and a paint gun handy this will work too. But im guessing most people don’t have access to one of those so spray cans will do the job.

The key to a good finish is patience. By this point you’ve spent a fair few hours prepping and you don’t want to ruin it all by rushing the finish. To achieve a professional finish you want to put on plenty of fine coats. The finer the better! Don’t even worry after your first coat or two if you haven’t completely coated the bumper you’l be rewarded for your patience. Wait 10 – 15 mins between coats and keeping going until your happy with your finish.

Note: When we went out to get more spray paint we saw one of these handles for a spray gun. At a £5 we where dubious but for you guys we tried it. This made the painting process so much easier. Rather than the very on or of setting using the spray can alone this allowed us to spray a much finer coat with much more control great accessory if you can get your hands on one.

Step 5

Finish off

Wait until the paint is completely set then get the finest grade of sand paper you can lay your hands on and just give the bumper the once over to give a smooth finish. Rip of the masking and see the finished result! We where chuffed with our final result and even our automotive guru was amazed with the finish.

Final words

Once again this is not a quick job, but does give a really professional finish. We tried many ways of striping the paint and prepping and this is our definitive guide on how to achieve the best result through trial and error! So follow the steps. We made any mistakes so you didn’t have too!

Anyone worried about the durability our new finish we jet washed the car after to see if we could remove the paint like before and it didn’t budge. While working out how to get the best finish we re stripped some of our painted panels and take my word for it… even with the Fairy power spray it took me nearly as long to stip one of our painted wheel arches as the rest of the car. This is a good quality permanent finish. So give it a go and let us know what you think!

Paul & Zac

Reviving Cars