I am looking to sand/bead blast the bad paint job that my car had when I bought it. I want to start fresh and fix all of the problems that are visible and the ones I will discover that someone tried to fix in the past. I want to know what to worry about with blasting and the best way to go about it/ best method. My car is already in pieces so I don't need to worry about taking it apart. Any help would be appreciated.

 

if u never done it b4, work real carefull, keep that thing movin, dont overheat the metal or it will warp and strech an ****, so be carefull, get sum vidoes or i donno, just dont stay in one spot for too long, seconds extra is all it takes to eat through it....

 

chaged350 is right dont stay in one place to long I do a lot of blasting what I do is use 00 size sand and never use over 125 PSI at the sand blaster

 

I had my IROC walnut shelled last month or so....and he took it all the way to the factory primer ( e-coat ) It was a dusty mess and bits and pieces of media went into every nuck and cranny you can think of....something to keep in mind prior to painting it....you have to rise and blow out every single place before primmering it. I can only imagine the dirt/sand that would be in the finish if you hadn't.

I can tell you this, if you've never done it before - its 10x more work to strip and a car to bare metal and refinish it than you think it is. And I'm sure you know how I found that out....here are some pics when I first got the car back

http://www.exotik.cc/mario/000_0063.jpg
http://www.exotik.cc/mario/100_0002.jpg

And now more recent photos at my school being refinished by me

http://www.exotik.cc/mario/Project%20IROC-Z/

Not trying to steal your thread, just giving you a heads up on what to expect

 

sandblasting is for rust, you don't want to waste time sttripping a car by blasting it. it's just ridiculous. just get a heavy duty pollisher (because it spins at a lower rpm) and get some 80 grit discs for it and strip it that way, the cost of the polisher is worth it when you look at how much time it's gonna take you to blast a whole car.

 

Thanks for the info and tips. I still think I wanna blast but the info and tips are really helping out. I was origionally thinking I would just blast to bare metal, would the best thing to do be blast to the factory primer?

 

the factory E-coat is the best corrosion protection, ford guys wouldn't know, lol. you shouldn't remove the e-coat unless
A. it has rust underneath, which you'll see from the topcoat
B. if the metal is dented; it'll disturb the corrosion protection. That's why wrecked vehicles always rust where the metal is kinked >.

leave as much factory e-coat as you can. then you can self-etch the bare metal later, and it'll be just as good.

or you can strip it all and self etch everything. it really don't matter. aftermarket etching primer is really good but just not AS good as factory.

 

if you are trying to strip your current paint down to metal then prime and paint it, i would reccomend using a paint on stripper, you can buy them at autozone and all you do is pour some of the chemical into a can or whatever and get a crappy paintbrush you dont need and paint it on your car and then wait for 5 or 10 min and all your paint on your car will start bubbling and you can scrape it off with a brush, it works really well but you cant get it on plastic or other stuff and it wont hurt your metal as long as you prime it so it wont rust after you've stripped it

 

Polisher, what, you mean a dual action sander, not a polisher, those are for compounding and glaze, not snading, so you cna get a DA for cheap....

 

If I decide to sand and sand it all down with 80 grit paper will it be too rough on the car or will it be ok after sanding with higher grit paper and priming??

 

80 grit is harmless. those scratches come out with 180 grit paper which is also what you want to prime over.

charged350 I did mean a polisher because they are heavy and spin at a lower rpm thus, it grinds the paint off faster.

you could use a d.a. , just get one that has a "grinder mode"