Ok this is the first time in my life all 43 yrs of them that i am going to try some body work and paint on the 88 my son and i are redoing. The person that had the car b4 us painted the car red looks like orange peel I know that has to come off. Some of the white is also coming off . the white isd the original color. now do i have to take all the white off or what I will try to post some pics of what i have done so far.

Did he actually paint around the IROC Z logo?? Thats funny--Ive never seen that before!
Sorry...back on topic

First off congrats on the project. No matter what type of paint or color you end up using its finish is going to depend on the prep work. From what i can see in the pics you may want to go ahead and strip it all the way down. It also appears to me as well that the iroc emblems where taped out and painted around so you may want to get the exact measurements on their location on the doors and strip them off. That is going to be the only right way to clean that area up without any evidence of that issue. If you plan on keeping the iroc wheels on it since the po painted them red pick up some airplane stripper in the spray cans and it should take that right off for you. Just dont rush the prep the work and you should be fine keep posting pics and asking questions there are plenty of knowledgeable folks here that will be able to help you out.

are you sanding or stripping it? i would take it down with some 80 on a d/a. to remove the emblems i like to use a rubber wheel on a drill. remember to use etching primer on any bare metal areas then a filler primer. block sand the filler primer with 180 to find the low or high spots. you don't want to get sea sick when you look at all the hard work you've done.

I would strip it down to bare metal just like every one is saying then apply 1-2 coats of epoxy primer let cure for 24 hours then do your repair work and apply 3 costs of 2K primer surfacer then water block the car with 400 grit this is slow but it will alow you to see if the car is straight or not if you dry sand block with 220 grit you will not be able to see if the car is straght

i am using aircraft stipper and some sanding some brands of stipper are junk

dude your awesome....only thing i would do different is put as much of my body filler under the expoxy primer as i could. id dry block the entire car with 180 and a guide coat, then reprime block with 400 wet, then wetsand with 600

Whats with all the wet sanding primer? The only time you should be wet sanding is if you made a mistake and need to get a run or orange peal out of the clear. After you get it primed I would just block the car with 320 and guide coat, repeat if necessary, then clean it up with some Pre-cleano and shoot your color. But just like everyone else says, a great paint job is 90% prep work, so don't rush, but don't waste time being tedious with needless wet sanding, save that for the mistakes.

This is just my method, everyone has their own way.

umm.... have you ever painted with a metalic basecoat clear coat, or any base coat clear coat? 320 works on single stage, but if you use it on bb/cc then you get sand scratches coming back through the paint job and it just looks like a$$
as for wetsanding the primer being needless and a waste of time. The guys where i took my icar test didnt seem to think so

Yes, I have shot basecoat\clearcoat metallic, PPG and Dupont urethan, neither one of them showed any scratches. While I only worked a summer as a painters helper in a body shop about 10 years ago, it was a high production environment and you don't want to be sanding on a car all day. 320 was the lowest any of the painters went and no one wet sanded primer. Our finishes never suffered for it. I also do paint helmets on the side still and 320 is plenty fine for prepping for top coat on those where scratches are more pronounced due to the curve.

Different people have different methods, I won't say yours is the wrong way (for you it's not), I just don't like the mess that comes with wet sanding, and blocking something more than once after it's already flat just to go to a finer grit is overkill and unnecessary for me.

somebody distroyed those early model IROC wheels