I am in the middle of sanding my 72 in prep for paint. my ?? is, the car has had it looks like 3 paint jobs in its life. top coat is messed up pretty good I started out with 80 grit paper to kinda get a uniform base to go from then went to 120. Now I find that only PARTS of the car had a few layers cause I hit bare metal in a few spots. Since I am hand sanding and don't have the strenght of Godzilla, what do I need to do . I was gona go from 120 to 400 and finish up with 600 and wet sand with 2000 grit. Am I gona have to strip the car now or what...Ideas please...Jim :confused:
Mine had origional paint but 3 layers of it, the top coat was white, next two were green and red they were just layers of paint to make the car the shade of white that they wanted. I used heavy grit on an electrical orbital sander to take the paint off and progressed to lighter grit to smooth the finsh
There's no set way to remove paint from a car. Many like chemical stripping and others refuse to do it. It largely depends on whether you are trying to get the finish down to bare metal or not. If you want all of the paint and primer gone, chemical stripping is likely the best approach. If you opt for sanding and use a heavy grit, you will have to essentially have to sand the car twice, once heavy to remove as much paint as possible, and again with light grits to smooth the finish for primer. A lot of work.
Chemical stripping is a double edge sword. Its much faster but unless you get every bit of it off your car either by rinsing and/or neutralizing, it will lift your new paint just as easy as your old paint. Its really hard to get it out of all those nooks and cranies. Just keep that in mind should you decide to use the stuff.
I stipped many areas with a special stripper wheel that attaches to my $6 grinder (that just keeps on going!). Bought the stripper thing at Autozone for $10 or so and it takes paint and rust off without scratching the metal. It looks like a hardened sponge. I used chemicals on the valances, but rinsed them off good. Paint prep is almost an artform and there are many experts on here that know way more than me about prepping the surface (which is the most important part imo).
I use both sanding and chemical strippers depending on how much paint I have to remove. If there is more than 3 different layers of paint to contend with, I will use stripper. But like Mavoholic said, you must remove every last speck of the stripper or you will have big problems later. Stripper will also soften old bodyfiller and ruin fiberglass. After I'm done using stripper, I scrub the area down completely with a scuff pad and lots of soapy water , dry it off, and then scrub it down again with another scuff pad and paint thinner. For the hard to reach seams and stuff, I use a brush to get the stripper out. I've never had any lifting problems later on.
thanks for the info folks , I may be headin to Commerce in a shade of grey primer but look out when I get back...Jim
