That looks better!

Every time I looked at the van that scabby bonnet kept staring back at me! I knew that would have to be one of the first jobs to do.

I decided that there was no way I'd be able to match the faded pearly white paint on such a big panel as the bonnet by using aerosols, and It's not worth having a spray shop do it, so I decided to take the safer option of painting the bonnet satin black. 4 bolts and the bonnet was off so I could deal with it in the comfort of my temporary spray booth in the (yet to be decorated!) spare bedroom.

When I started rubbing the rust and flaking paint back, it confirmed that the rust wasn't deep at all and came off fairly easily, although there was a lot of it. Every tiny little pock mark held a spot of rust underneath and I got them all off so they shouldn't come through the new finish.

Up into the "spray booth" and I put a coat of grey primer on, followed by 3 cans of satin black, which was probably about 10 light coats. Some of the parts I'd feathered back sunk a little bit but it looks OK unless you get very close.

With the bonnet refitted, I decided that a nice simple graphic was required to break it up a bit and show I wasn't just trying to create the "muscle car" look 😆, so I ordered this. Seemed to sum up where I'm at in my life quite nicely!

Obviously, beauty is in the eye of the beholder etc, but for the sake of less than £50 and a couple of hours I think that has really tidied the front end up a lot. I'll tackle the rust above the windscreen when the weather is warm enough to spray outside. The jury is out at the moment on whether to spray it white (any poor matching will be a lot less noticeable up there), or whether to spray in a 2" wide satin black band there, which would kind of work OK with the bonnet and window / roof trims.