repainting DMC logo on late cars

[Soma576@xxxx]

Hey guys,

one project pointed out to me at a car show i was recently in was suggesting 
that i repaint the black background of my DeLorean hood badge (i have an 82). 
over time it has faded to being just stains of dark gray, in fact the whole 
badge was nearly stripped of paint. i had noticed it before but never really 
thought much of it. so, this week i decided to repaint it.

anyway, this is what i did: 
i went to the local hardware store and bought a can of OX RUST Black Enamel 
paint which claims it is for painting metal so it doesn't rust. it was the 
best stuff i could find at the store that seemed to be what i wanted. i took 
it home and got some masking tape which i covered basically a good 8 inches 
around the entire badge. i then covered the rest of the right side of my 
hood and front fascia with towels in case the spray paint misted out and 
landed on the untaped parts of my hood. i then sprayed the whole badge a 
couple of times, and watched the paint basically run off of the badge onto my 
tape! some stayed but it always thinned out and ran off. the extra towels 
were a good thing because the paint did kind of cloud out! anyway i sprayed 
the badge probably 4 times before a good amount began to stick to it. i let 
it sit about 10 minutes, then wiped some of the paint off of the raised 
letters and used my fingertip to 'pat' the paint onto the places where it 
just ran off of before. this was somewhat time comsuming but it didn't make 
the paint look uneven - it did exactly what i wanted it to do, get paint to 
stick where it wasn't before. i then let this job dry for about 30 minutes, 
then i sprayed the whole thing one more time. this time i was painting on 
top of paint and the paint stayed as well as made the whole badge look much 
more uniform. then i let it sit overnight. today i came out to the car and 
checked the job. looked pretty good but the paint looks pretty thick on the 
back ground. at least it doesn't appear to be uneven. i pulled back the 
tape and was momentarily horrified when i saw black paint had seeped into the 
tape and stained my precious hood!! luckily none had gone onto the fascia. 
however i quickly realized that this is stainless steel! so i got some paint 
thinner on a rag and wiped most of the paint off with that (it hadn't totally 
cured yet). then for the paint that got on the hood all around the very base 
of the badge, i used an old toothbrush with paint thinner on it. that worked 
beautifully. now i had a totally black badge with clean stainless around it. 
i grabbed my scotchbrite pad and carefully scraped the paint off of the 
letters of the badge, leaving the background untouched. once i had that 
perfectly shiny with a nice horizontal grain, i resurfaced the whole hood 
because the toothbrust and sideways scotchbrite left a couple tiny horizontal 
scratches. i then cleaned the hood with water and a dry towel and admired my 
quick work. not too bad for an impromptu job! my only complaint is that the 
paint looks a little thick on the whole badge. i would have liked to have 
gotten only maybe 2 coats of paint on but like i said, the paint just doesn't 
stick well. but anyway - it's WAY better than it was before!

has anyone else tried repainting their hood badge? any good tips if i were 
to redo it someday?

later,
Andy

Soma576@xxxx
1982 DeLorean DMC-12 VIN#11596
Fargo, ND 58102


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