This thread will be documenting my attempt to paint my own car.
Some background, I bought this car back in... Heck I don't remember. Late 04? I think the previous owner took a sanding block to it to get it ready for paint before I got it. This left the paint very thin. It started to surface rust on the hood, roof, trunk, door sills, and a few other parts of the car.
I stripped those parts here and there and spraybombed some primer to slow the rust down. Been driving the car with primer patches since then.
Here are some picts from a couple years ago (for some reason I don't have any more recent full car pictures) on this thread
http://www.turbobuick.com/forums/sh...-t-type-needs-help-im-ready-tackle-enemy.html
http://www.turbobuick.com/forums/sh...ir/167658-after-picts-my-front-clip-swap.html
I finally moved into a house with a garage and am doing what I always wanted to do. Prep and paint the car.
So I went ahead and stripped the thing down, this was pretty straight forward except for the stuff on the doors. This killed off several hours in and of itself.
Those are my most recent picts. My camera batteries died so I haven't been able to take picts of the progress since then.
I have since removed the side windows and started on the sanding. Ive blended out a substantial amount of the car.
What I did was remove the paint from the roof, trunk, and hood using aircraft stripper. This was a pain in the butt till I discovered that steel wool would not scratch the metal but would take the paint right off if you scrubbed it with aircraft stripper. If i had known that I would have been days ahead. I also wasted several days trying to sand off the old paint. This was taking forever and was not leaving a smooth surface. I'm glad I stopped doing that when I did. After I stripped, I washed the car and did my best to scrub every last bit of stripper off of it.
The reason I removed the paint is because there was so much surface rust poking through it here and there that I didn't trust what was on there. It looked like it had small cracks all over the surface if you looked very close.
A huge mistake I made was not adequately masking off the areas I did not want to strip with the stripper. I had some stripper run down onto areas that were good. This has caused me a lot of work because I am now sanding all of that out and blending it into the existing good paint.
What I am doing now has been going over all of the edges where I stopped stripping with the chemical and am now stripping away a good bit of that mechanically with sandpaper and blending it in to the good paint.
For this I am using 220 grit paper using a flat pad orbital sander, a 12" board, and some foam sanding blocks.
This is A LOT of work. After a couple of days I have the rear quarter panel pretty smooth after I did a once over on the whole car to get it somewhat smooth.
What I have been doing is looking at the paint like a topographical map... I see the distance between the primer and the paint on my feathered edges and I try to maximize that distance using my blocks to try and keep things as level as possible. I have found some low spots in the process that I smooth out manually with a small piece of wet 220 on my finger (we are talking about a couple dime sized dings here and there) and then i put a small piece of masking tape on them to show which spots need attention later.
I plan on sanding the car up to 320 before I prime it.
Right now I have been taking every little imperfection in the paint and blending it out with the 220... even tiny little rock chips that are like the size of the tip of a ball point pen. My philosophy is that anything I can feel will be very visible with primer and then paint on it.
Am I doing anything wrong? Am I right that even very small paint imperfections will come through the primer? Or will the block sanding on the primer take care of that? I was planning on applying a couple of coats of primer wet sanding with 400 in between and then doing 600 to prepare for the topcoat.
The small paint imperfections have been killing me. I have taken to using a small piece of wet 220 and using just my finger to blend them out in a very small scale and then going over that with a block to level it out on a larger scale. I was trying to get them out by just blocking but I ended up removing tons of paint from the entire panel and not just the part I wanted to clean up. Will this show through?
As it stands now, the work I have done is very very smooth. If you look at it from an angle it almost looks polished. I have run my fingers over it numerous times using the cloth over the fingers trick, the paper over the fingers trick, and just latex gloves. I found ridges here and there and fixed them and am now to the point where I don't feel them. Unfortunately the car had primer on it before I got it and I discovered that someone had sanded the ever living crap out of the car with what looks like 16 grit sand paper. I can tell they were trying to remove some rust from the sail panel. I will have to apply filler to this area no doubt. I also believe the car may have had portions repainted. The hood and front fenders have black primer. The roof has a red primer.. and that fades into a gray primer about halfway down the side windows.
I also discovered that sanding dry is a real pita that ends up screwing you over more than it helps. So since I have been sanding everything wet now I have been making much more rapid progress.
I'll have many questions. If anyone wants to help I would really appreciate it. If not this will be the thread where you see me learn from my mistakes so you don't have to. I have never painted a car or prepped a car before. I have just done a lot of reading on line about it.. thats all. If I screw it up, oh well.
I will be posting more recent pictures as soon as I get some camera batteries.
Questions, comments, complaints, suggestions, anything, please feel free to drop a line.
Some background, I bought this car back in... Heck I don't remember. Late 04? I think the previous owner took a sanding block to it to get it ready for paint before I got it. This left the paint very thin. It started to surface rust on the hood, roof, trunk, door sills, and a few other parts of the car.
I stripped those parts here and there and spraybombed some primer to slow the rust down. Been driving the car with primer patches since then.
Here are some picts from a couple years ago (for some reason I don't have any more recent full car pictures) on this thread
http://www.turbobuick.com/forums/sh...-t-type-needs-help-im-ready-tackle-enemy.html
http://www.turbobuick.com/forums/sh...ir/167658-after-picts-my-front-clip-swap.html
I finally moved into a house with a garage and am doing what I always wanted to do. Prep and paint the car.
So I went ahead and stripped the thing down, this was pretty straight forward except for the stuff on the doors. This killed off several hours in and of itself.
Those are my most recent picts. My camera batteries died so I haven't been able to take picts of the progress since then.
I have since removed the side windows and started on the sanding. Ive blended out a substantial amount of the car.
What I did was remove the paint from the roof, trunk, and hood using aircraft stripper. This was a pain in the butt till I discovered that steel wool would not scratch the metal but would take the paint right off if you scrubbed it with aircraft stripper. If i had known that I would have been days ahead. I also wasted several days trying to sand off the old paint. This was taking forever and was not leaving a smooth surface. I'm glad I stopped doing that when I did. After I stripped, I washed the car and did my best to scrub every last bit of stripper off of it.
The reason I removed the paint is because there was so much surface rust poking through it here and there that I didn't trust what was on there. It looked like it had small cracks all over the surface if you looked very close.
A huge mistake I made was not adequately masking off the areas I did not want to strip with the stripper. I had some stripper run down onto areas that were good. This has caused me a lot of work because I am now sanding all of that out and blending it into the existing good paint.
What I am doing now has been going over all of the edges where I stopped stripping with the chemical and am now stripping away a good bit of that mechanically with sandpaper and blending it in to the good paint.
For this I am using 220 grit paper using a flat pad orbital sander, a 12" board, and some foam sanding blocks.
This is A LOT of work. After a couple of days I have the rear quarter panel pretty smooth after I did a once over on the whole car to get it somewhat smooth.
What I have been doing is looking at the paint like a topographical map... I see the distance between the primer and the paint on my feathered edges and I try to maximize that distance using my blocks to try and keep things as level as possible. I have found some low spots in the process that I smooth out manually with a small piece of wet 220 on my finger (we are talking about a couple dime sized dings here and there) and then i put a small piece of masking tape on them to show which spots need attention later.
I plan on sanding the car up to 320 before I prime it.
Right now I have been taking every little imperfection in the paint and blending it out with the 220... even tiny little rock chips that are like the size of the tip of a ball point pen. My philosophy is that anything I can feel will be very visible with primer and then paint on it.
Am I doing anything wrong? Am I right that even very small paint imperfections will come through the primer? Or will the block sanding on the primer take care of that? I was planning on applying a couple of coats of primer wet sanding with 400 in between and then doing 600 to prepare for the topcoat.
The small paint imperfections have been killing me. I have taken to using a small piece of wet 220 and using just my finger to blend them out in a very small scale and then going over that with a block to level it out on a larger scale. I was trying to get them out by just blocking but I ended up removing tons of paint from the entire panel and not just the part I wanted to clean up. Will this show through?
As it stands now, the work I have done is very very smooth. If you look at it from an angle it almost looks polished. I have run my fingers over it numerous times using the cloth over the fingers trick, the paper over the fingers trick, and just latex gloves. I found ridges here and there and fixed them and am now to the point where I don't feel them. Unfortunately the car had primer on it before I got it and I discovered that someone had sanded the ever living crap out of the car with what looks like 16 grit sand paper. I can tell they were trying to remove some rust from the sail panel. I will have to apply filler to this area no doubt. I also believe the car may have had portions repainted. The hood and front fenders have black primer. The roof has a red primer.. and that fades into a gray primer about halfway down the side windows.
I also discovered that sanding dry is a real pita that ends up screwing you over more than it helps. So since I have been sanding everything wet now I have been making much more rapid progress.
I'll have many questions. If anyone wants to help I would really appreciate it. If not this will be the thread where you see me learn from my mistakes so you don't have to. I have never painted a car or prepped a car before. I have just done a lot of reading on line about it.. thats all. If I screw it up, oh well.
I will be posting more recent pictures as soon as I get some camera batteries.
Questions, comments, complaints, suggestions, anything, please feel free to drop a line.