The 3 big chips were a bit too deep for touching-up and painting so I bought a tube of P38 body-filler (£5.99) and some 600grit Wet/Dry fine sandpaper (2.49) to make a nice go of the entire front bonnet lip, which is also dotted with smaller chips, and repainting it in one go with my special-mix Light Silver 406 spray (£12.99), all from Halfords.
I used a small strip of mid-coarse sandpaper to rub down about 1cm around the deep chips. The body-filler guide recommends rubbing it to the bare metal, but the Subaru primer is so good I decided not to go through it completely and the P38 sticks to it just fine. I mixed a small amount of P38 and spread a thin layer over the entire sanded areas, leaving as little excess as possible. I then rubbed over the filled areas with the mid-coarse paper until I was reaching through to the paint again, then switched to the Wet/Dry paper, which creates ultra-fine dust that shows up the tiny blemishes in the filler very well. It also leaves a super smooth surface and after a fair bit of rubbing away I got the filled area down to just around the chip and level with the surrounding paint.
As a final test to check for flaws in the filler I masked a small patch around a filled area and sprayed on a quick coat of zinc-primer. I finally soaked some Wet/Dry paper in warm water for 10 mins and rubbed down the entire sprayed area until it began to reach the surrounding silver paint, leaving an ultra-smooth finish.
My only remaining task is to rub down the entire finished bonnet lip at once, until it is just reaching the primer, to prepare it for the silver repaint. I have no idea how the new paint will blend into the rest of the bonnet so we'll have to wait and see...
Got some good practice with filling and sanding that's made me feel more confident about attempting to reshape the gouge in the rear wheel-arch!
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