Just after some advice for priming the bare metal on a small repair that I'm doing to the bonnet of our Octavia (a cricket ball sized lump of ice was thrown up by a lorry, and it hit out car at a closing speed of about 120mph!).

The paint has been chipped off down to bare metal and there's a pea sized dint. I've cleaned the metal and smoothed the ragged edges of the paint - but realized that I've abraded the galvanised layer off the metal.....duh! I've got some normal grey acrylic primer, but wonder if I should put some sort of corrosion inhibitor on first.

If anyone can give me some sensible advice, it'd be much appreciated.

TIA.

p.s. as a temporary fix, I've just painted a thin layer of grey primer on to keep the moisture & road salt off the bare metal.

Hi A&Rblackline, I'm currently doing some relatively small areas of corrosion on my Felly (perpetual problem!). I normally just apply grey primer but the recent weather hasn't been conducive to applying finishing coat etc. Normal primer tends to be porous so in my case the corrosion was tending to bleed back through. As an alternative I've just applied Hammerite 3 in 1 application, available from Halfrauds & others. Essentially it's a rust inhibitor, primer & base coat in one application & you can select a from a range of colours. Thus far I've been impressed with it & as a result have also extended it's use to the pick up bed etc.

Worth considering,

Cheers,

Rob

All you need is here:

http://www.bilthamber.com/

Thanks for the suggestions - some of the products on the bilthamber site look really good.

Rob, I know what you mean about the porosity of normal grey primer, as I've had the same problem as you with a previous car that I had - although it was a 'classic' pre-galvanised Fiat......which might have had something to do with it!!

I've found a couple of small bottles of (old) etch primer in my workshop, but FWIR they don't play nicely with modern eco-friendly topcoat paint - so might give your suggestions a go.

Cheers.

Bilthamber would be the way to go for me to.