I've mocked up most of the new interior in my fc and pulled it all back out today to start paint prep. First on the list was to remove all the old paint.

I decided to grab 2 gallons of automotive paint stripper, a scraper, and some sand paper. After 5 hours I have the right front fender fully stripped to bare metal. The left front quarter panel is almost completely down to bare metal. Both headlight covers are down to bare metal. The hood is carbon fiber. And both doors have just begun getting stripped. I had no idea this process would take so long.

On average how long had it taken others to strip the entire exterior of the car of paint? And what methods worked best?

My hands are raw from sand paper and the stripper eating through the gloves and onto my hands. I don't want to do another 20 hours of stripping this way.

 

Usually you don't go all the way down to bare metal on the whole car, just the rusty stuff.

The last whole car I painted took about four weeks of prep before painting began (but I'm hardly a pro and didn't have all the tools they do).

Now you know why it's so expensive to have a shop do it.

 

^Word.

 

I would NEVER try to do my own body work or paint prep or painting.
I'll leave that to someone skilled cause after you paint the car and clear it, you'll see all the areas you missed . It'll look worse than what you started with. You're crazy trying to do that without power tools.

 

Not my first paint job lol. Just never have went down to bare metal. I only decided to do it to shave the weight of the old paint. I put a grand into paint but never thought that prep was going to be so rediculous. Live and learn I guess. I may have to start a build thread to show the progress over the next few months. Anyway thanks for the input. haha

 

It took me almost a year to sand the body down to the factory primer, but I did it all by hand, and only doing a couple of hours per month. I learned my lesson, and figured out that sanding all the paint out was not necessary, but added additional work prep.

Wish I had a garage an extra time to do it all over again, after the lessons learned, I am sure that I can do a much better job

 

A DA with 36, 60 or 80 grit is the way to go if you insist on going to bare metal. You'll want to hit it with epoxy primer as soon as you get it stripped, especially in muggy NC. I have found that the stripper does well removing the paint but not the primer. So you might find a combined arms attack the best choice with stripper to get rid of most of the paint really quickly and after it's dried and rehardened go after the paint remnants and primer with the DA.

Or you can get it blasted for probably $1500. Depends on how much you value your time.

 

Soda blasting.

Or aircraft stripper (from a professional body supply store) if you plan on doing it chemically.

 

I thought 220 was too coarse for the job. I would imagine anything lower will require lots of body work prep before paint. no?

 

You shouldn't take the e-coat off of a modern car. Unless you plan on having the body dipped again. You can not duplicate what is there. simply sand to the base and paint. Prime areas that have bondo and seal.

 

If you're going to bare metal you either have a lot of rust or you're going for a high end paint job. You'll start with the epoxy primer as a base over the bare metal. And then you'll go thru several 2kprimer-blocksand-2kprimer-block cycles. Each cycle usually uses a finer paper - with 220 being one of the middle stages - and you'll end up at a 400-600 grit. Most of the time the last primer will be a polyester primer (Clausen's are very popular and used on Musclecar) for final blocking before sealer, base and finally clear coats.

Like everything, some people can be religious fanatics about the use of polyster primers, what sand paper grit to finish with and even whether it should be wet or dry. Kevin Tetz, Rick "The Arsonist" Bacon and Chip Foose all have their own rules of thumb and techniques.

 

At my shop and should be working on my Cosmo but I had to log in just to reply to this.

I have to reply because of the mention of Musclecar and the characters on the show.

Having seen some of these cars in real life, I can tell you that things look 1000x better on TV. The actual quality of the paint jobs on the Musclecar cars I've seen is about what you'd get for a $500 respray at Maaco. Runs, drips, sags, orange peel, dry spots, overspray everywhere, improper prep and really any other sin you can think of when painting. I sincerely do hope that it is just a side effect of building a TV car and not a reflection on the skill of those building the vehicles. A Musclecar paint job is the last thing I'd ever want.

Even the basic body work was poor. I could spot multiple repairs through the paint, given away by obvious things like filler not sanded to match the body line, gaps not lining up, openings around tail lights not even, welds not ground properly. Many areas had not been prepped properly. The engine bays, often shot with Duplicolor products (as made clear on camera) had peeling paint, rust painted over, poor coverage and other flaws.

And that's not even getting into the engines which seem to be leaking fluids from every gasket surface.

So Clausen's may be great primer, but they sure as hell don't know how to use it.

 

LOTS of aircraft paint stripper and a powerwasher should take care of most the paint removal. That is the quickest way to bare metal or at least to the primer that i know of.

 

^this^

 

Actually, the one I always find shocking are the Duplicolor paint jobs on TruckU. That finish isn't just orange peel, it's berber carpet!

On the "for TV" notion, I went on a Warner Bros studio tour in 2006 or 7. We were on the set of the Gilmore Girls and they showed us how they had to completely redo the interior sets for HDTV. The textures and finishes would be obviously fake on HDTV but looked fine in SD.

And given how it seems like all of the car shows have become infomercials, they probably don't have the funds to achieve Yugo quality paint jobs.

 

Well... I've had plety to read to say the least haha.

I guess I should start off by explaining my plan. Strip to primer via aircraft stripper. Strip primer with sander. The paint I'll be using is Sherwinn Williams. Starting with a Etch primer, then base primer (sandable). Sand it all smooth with block and match all dent fixes to the body. Metallic base and base color after that. Two coats of clear, wet sand, and then a final layer of clear.

As for Sherwinn Williams paint I've heard it's not the best and not the worst which is where my DIY paint skill lies so I'm sure the quality will be fine for what I'm doing. However, if anyone has advice for the same price range then please shoot them over. Also, why do some say go to bare metal and some say to go to factory primer? I've always been told to sand to bare metal and then coat with etch primer. Just curious.

 

Your car came with something called an E-coat. It is a very expensive process that you will not be able to replicate. I stole this off the internet::
The coating process consists of a series of 13 operations that provide the metal with a surface that is ready for finishing coats of paint. The first eight steps of the process prepare the metal by submerging the body of the vehicle in a series of tanks that wash and then coat it with a rust inhibiting layer. The next step is to dip the vehicle into the electrostatically charged E-Coat tank, which covers every square inch of the interior and exterior of the body and electrically bonds the primer to the surface of the metal. After the body is passed through three more conditioning and washing tanks, it is cured in a baking oven. The vehicle is now ready to begin the final body work touches and be prepped for paint.

You do not want to remove this coating. When we were painting my car it was a big deal if we actually saw metal on some of the edges. They had to be dealt with separately. Why you see some restoration guys go to metal it has a lot to do with the fact that those older cars did not have an "e-coat" therefore they could actually improve on original with newer solvent based etching chemicals and primers. When a car has this coating you only go to metal for serious bodywork , welding etc. You can put filler or glaze right over sanded base coat. No need to see metal. When you see metal you should use an epoxy primer asap as rust will start immediately.
Check out my thread if you like for some examples: https://www.rx7club.com/detailing-re...arning-989963/


By the way I am not a professional in this field and every thing I am suggesting came to me second hand from my cousin who is a professional painter.

 

it's easier to diet off 2 lbs than it is to remove it from a car in the form of paint.

the only real reason to ever strip a car down that far is if it is being built as a show car, some **** retentive people will also do it if they have nothing better to do and plenty of time on their hands.

 

That's where I fall under... **** retentive lol

 

Date skinny Chicks

 

the e-coat is now freaking me out.

I plan on fixing the paint on my trunk lid this summer, because it is flaking off at the rear of the lid. The primer is starting to rust a bit (not bad, but a bit) and i am wondering if it is okay to sand that little rust down and immediately nip it with primer before paint?

 

yeah its fine

 

No need for that.
I think your main takeway from the above info should be that there's no compelling reason to go to bare metal for a respray unless absolutely necessary because nowadays the factory does a pretty good job of paint prep.

Unlike the olden days....
Back when I was into British stuff, I had a picture of Healey 3000 shells (which were stamped offsite) just sitting in a field behind the factory...completely exposed to the elements. They were literally starting to rust before they even got to the assembly line.

I also believe that structure design has become much more conscious of water traps and how to avoid designing them into the chassis. Compare the RX7 to say, an early 240Z, and you see much more care taken not to trap water and debris in body cavities in the later Mazda design.

 

the germans did stuff like that too, the reason the CSL coupes are so rare is because the bodies were built in one factory and then trucked in bare metal to the BMW plant, and it rains a lot in germany, so a good portion were rusting internally before they were even painted