fixing a rust spot on my Jetta Door.

Took some time over the past couple weekends to remove a growing rust bubble from the driver side front door on my 2006 Jetta TDI.

1st attempt didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped.   Had problems with a 2 yr old spray paint can.   Can would  spray and mysteriously stop randomly.  Very annoying.  Turns out some of the solids in the paint (metallic and colour) had settled in the bottom of the can and when not mixed well enough would clog the dip tube.

Warming up the can in a bucket of Warm (~100F) water for about 30 minutes, and about 5 minutes of shaking got the material all back in suspension.

2nd try worked out much better, with only a tiny hint of tiger striping...

Pictures from 1st attempt

Rust bubble

Couple of dents in the door,  slight crease in sheet metal

Prepping metal,  scraped away loose paint, blue masking tape marks a couple of the misc creases in the paint.

1st time working with bondo

Priming bondo areas

Spray paint not cooperating, horrible attempt at blending

after clearcoat,  blending not very good.  This is now a 30 foot door.  Meaning it looks not bad from 30 feet away.

2nd attempt - the fix.  sanded with 800 wet to remove the orange peel in the previous paint job,  and warmed up the can and got a good spray from the 2 yr old aerosol can.  Next time I repaint a large area,  have a good trouble light to examine the base colour before doing the clear,  I likely would have seen the tiger striping and blended it out by going 45 degrees from the original spray pattern...

Instead of removing the doorskin, I masked the car with a roll of really thin kraft paper I had in the basement...  Worked fine.

Now it's a 5ft door,  just a little more orange peel than I'd like, but I can live with it...