Hey folks, just figured I would go through the process of how I painted my KEI eyelids in case anyone ends up buying magic-r or kei-office unpainted ones.

Mine were KEI eyelids I purchased from a forum member who decided not to paint them.

What will you need? First you need to find out whether or not your color is 2-coat or tricoat system. You can go to Touch Up Paint from PaintScratch.com , enter your color-code, and it will let you know if you need a mid-coat paint for your application.

Aside from finding that out, you will need:

-Adhesive Promoter (Optional)
-good fiberglass primer
-base coat aerosol
-mid coat aerosol (only if tri-coat)
-clear coat aerosol
-sand paper (my primer can says anywhere from 350-600 is recommended for primed surfaces. I believe this is unique to the individual. I have read many mixed articles about sanding preferences)
-spray-bottle with water and dish soap
-something to spray on and a few clean cloths
-your unpainted eyelids
-you

This is the selection of paint I used:



Step 1: (Setup)
Find a good surface to lay down some newspapers and some cloths to lay your eyelids on face-up. If you can, have the eyelids angled a bit (topside off the surface). It will make spraying the curves a bit easier.

Step 2: (Clean the surface)
Get a spray bottle and fill it with water and a hint of dish soap. You can spray the unpainted eyelids, sand it if you wish, and whipe it with a cloth dry. I sprayed it twice with clean water so there would be no soap left over on the eyelid. My eyelids came prepped and very clean. I saw no reason to do anything more.

Step 2.5 (optional): (Adhesive Promoter)
Using adhesive promoter is purely your call. I heard good things about them, so I used SEM adhesive promoter. I sprayed one very light coat over the front of the eyelids, and then waited 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, I sprayed a full coat on the eyelids and waited 15 minutes before applying the primer.

Step 3: (Primer)
I used 3 coats of evercoat fiberglass primer. I did 3 wet coats and waited 15 minutes inbetween each coat per the instructions. The can says to wait 1 hour before applying the base-coat.

Step 4: (Base-Coat)
I started off with a very light mist-coat just to get a feel for how it was going to look and set. I followed with 3 more coats. I waited until the paint got a bit tacky to apply the next coat. This paint was very fast-drying, and I moved onto the clear coat 45 minutes later. I'd recommend having a panel or your car close-by to do a color-check. If your paint-system is a tri-coat however, you will be required to do some blending to get the correct color.

Step 5: (Clear-Coat)
I ended up doing 3 coats of this on the eyelids separated by 15 minutes-a-piece. They have a nice gloss, and throughout the whole process remained super-smooth. I only did an initial wet-sand before the adhesive promoter and saw no orange-peel effect. They look great.






You can also use a clear coat rubbing compound such as "Presta Ultra Cutting Creme". I saw no reason to seeing as they came out just as I wanted to.

Here is the tape I will be using to apply these eyelids as well.




I feel now like painting is very subjective. As long as it comes out the way you want it to, job-well-done I say.

 

Some pics of finished product:

 

looks great man

 

Thanks for the guide, the paint looks off, is this because your car's paint is old?

 

I don't think the car paint is old, there is something definitely wack in that eyelid paint, like it's missing the flakes or something.

 

Everyone is a critic
I thought the color looked pretty good/matching!

 

I'm sorry you feel offended about my comment, but I base it upon what I see on the pictures you posted, maybe it's different in person.

Next time put a disclaimer that you don't want any comments which don't agree with you.

But FYI:

Car:
R 154
G 171
B 189

Eyelid:
R 117
G 135
B 155

 

lol not at all offended, just mildly surprised. Thank you for the informative post. I appreciate it.

 

great post and pics jamesf...good job!!

 

So what did the total for paint and supplies cost you? Was it worth not getting it done professionally?

 

well it wasn't so much a money saving attempt. They just happen to come unpainted to me and I wanted to try my hand at it. For example, the cost that I spent was around 80.00 for everything. However, some of the stuff I used like adhesive promoter is optional so you could save there

 

Where did you get your basecoat? I paid around 90 for the paint alone (1 pint) over at Sherwin-Williams, it was some ULTRA 7000 something.

 

paintscratch