Man....want to let me help you paint my bumper and hood?

 

thanks for taking the time to write this. and i do have to agree with the whole "bondo" thing. most if the kids around here have 6'' of filler over the whole car, then they go to ace and get 20 cans of flat black and spray the entire car with it. makes me laugh when they start bi*chin about how their "paint job" is flaking off.

 

lol, wow, as kids say now a days "what a hater" soooo true!!!

 

i got a 90 rs and i plan on repainting it but im goin to do my own body work to get it prepaired. it still has its original paint on it but some body parts are from different cars (bumper, chin spoiler, rear hatch) i only have a couple days to do this due to work schedule and not being able to work in a garage. im taking a trip to my dads to do the body work in his garage but i only have 3-4 days. whats the best way to sand, fill, prime etc. also keep in mind i am new to body work.
any input would be great

 

I am going to be honest here, I take it you have never attemted this type of work before and I seriously doubt you are going to be able to hammer out any dents, scuff (or strip) the original finish(es), apply filler, block the filler, epoxy the bare spots, throw down high build primer, and block that in three or four days.

When I did the work to my camaro I had dabbled in body work a few times, but I found doing it right takes a lot of time. I probably had one whole day (8 hours) doing nothing but filling and blocking just my A and B pillars (T-top car). I am sure the pros on here can get the whole car done in 3 or 4 days, but there is a learning curve that is pretty steep until you get the process figured out.

I suggest you break it up into manageable sections, like start with the rear quarters, do one at a time (sand, fill prime). Once you are done with that, move onto the doors ect. This way you are not trying to do too much at one time.

 

+1

You won't be satisfied with the outcome with only 3 or 4 days available and having never attempted bodywork before. Save your money, read books, take a class, learn from a geezer that has done it for 40 years, then give it a go. You'll be happier in the end.

 

yea if you only got 3-4 days its gonna look like a maaco 199 paint job... you should wait till you got more time to dedicate to it

 

well im going to my dads garage wich is basically a shop. i am also havimg my cousins help me some. the body of the car is actually in good condition. i have a small ding in the door and some scratches on the the deeper side on the rear bumper and i need to repair the chin spoiler. the chin spoiler is no big deal im planning on getting a non cracked one. i jus wanted to sand down the body real good and have 2 primer coats jus so it wouldnt be all kinds of colors

 

Well if all you are going to do is scuff the body and repair a few dings and spray on primer, 3 or 4 days should be good. But if you intend on blocking it to make the body strait, you wont have time. Blocking is extremely time consuming. 90% of a good paint job is in the prep work. You half *** the prep work, the best spray job in the world will still look like crap.

 

well i was going to use a da sander to sand down most of the body. as far as block sanding i have no idea about that.

 

Well first off, I am not a pro. I can tell you that a DA is great for panel prep to remove paint for a repair, knocking down filler, and feathering paint for smooth transitions into repair areas. DA's are also good at creating large waves in the paint that you wont see (or feel) until you get clear on it. It will make your large panels wavy.

Block sanding is done with blocks of various lengths, shapes, and flexibility to make panels perfectly flat and make countours smooth. This is done by sanding in an "X" pattern on a panel (not parallel to the body lines) until your filler has a good feather on the edges with no high or low spots. On primer this will identify low spots and waves in the paint. These steps are outlined in the initial post so I will not go into great detail.

This site has a lot of good information for first time and experienced guys. Spend some time reading up on it before you do anything. Sign up in the forum and ask questions (be sure to read the sticky's first). They are pretty helpful.
http://www.autobody101.com/content/

You just have to remember that there are many different ways to get to the end in body work, so take the most prescribed information (probably good info if you hear the same thing from several people) and base your techniques off of that and you should be fine.

 

+1 for finding someone willing to teach you. Also, check out weekend/evening courses at your local Tech College. Finally, check out the Paintucation series by Kevin Tetz. That is also a good investment.

The final thing to do is practice. When I did my weekend autobody course, the instructor told us to get a '60's VW Beetle fender. He then proceeded to give us each a whack in the fender with a ball-peen hammer. Then we pick-and-filed to get it straight. We patch welded, lead filled....all to that fender. All this long before I took on my first restop project. Along the way, I had someone else teach me the proper way to MIG weld..........

Long winded but while the books may tell you a lot, you actually need the experience to really pull it off nice.

 

well its kind of hard to do that when i work 6 days a week and have no garage or air tools to practice or go to classes

 

Don't mean to sound rude, but if that's your schedule and limitations maybe painting is one of those things you ought NOT to mess with. I believe that one should recognize that sometimes you CAN'T do it all, even if you want to.

 

anyone have a guide to removing the trim from the driver and passanger side doors its part of the ground effects remove the door panels? also just a side comment if u need window motors there was a site i found with google something like dicountbodyparts.com and i got the power window motors for my third gen for $11 was pretty happy to find

 

Yes remove the door panels and on the bottom ull see the 10mm nuts holding them

 

thnx will do my window motor while im in there i guess hopefully they are bad to do

 

Can anyone say about 15mm of filler to fix a completely botched quarter panel repair ? Seriously, that's where I'm starting from on the passenger's side. Yes, that quarter is being replaced (I do have welding experience) as the cracked filler left a hole about the size of my fist and then there are numerous other "fixating" holes the PO drilled in the panel to help hold the massive amount of filler in place.

As for staying on topic, anyone have any advice for someone on a small budget that is going to be starting from bare metal (no other choice, lots of small surface rust spots and other damage and sheet metal spots to replace), with a rather weak compressor (3HP peak and no way to upgrade without rewiring the garage), that will be starting off using POR-15 (well, a similar product) as I do NOT want my baby to rust again?

:edit: Oh, and yes, I have the old quarter and pass side fender to practice on... That's part of the plan. I plan on the body work to take the most of the spring to do and then it's just putting everything back together again once I get the parts.

 

As for staying on topic, anyone have any advice for someone on a small budget that is going to be starting from bare metal (no other choice, lots of small surface rust spots and other damage and sheet metal spots to replace), with a rather weak compressor (3HP peak and no way to upgrade without rewiring the garage), that will be starting off using POR-15 (well, a similar product) as I do NOT want my baby to rust again?

Try fixing or stripping one of those spare parts with that compressor. That should let you know what you're up against. I'll be surprised if someone with little to no experience could get any kind of a decent all over paint job with it. Paint is expensive, would hate to see you waste several hundred dollars on paint just to get a rattle can job. Good luck.

 

3hp is plenty enough, i ran my whole shop off of a 60 gallon with a 6 hp motor, with me in the booth painting and 2 other guys using air tools.

as for the bare metal, just get all your major mud work roughed in and block sanded down, then go over everything with some epoxy primer, then go over that with 2k primer. If you have it totally striped down i use raptor liner (yes spray in bedliner) on all the floor boards and under the car for under coating. as for everything else epoxy primer will seal it from doing any rusting.



I think im going to update this thread with some pictures cause im about to do a two tone on my iroc

 

I never seemed to have enough volume or whatever with 60 gallon tank. Always start off good with DA but compressor wouldn't keep up. Now I have a 30 gallon tank with the 60. Compressor catches up like that. But I'm just using 400 dollar compressor from Lowes. Did paint a box truck one time with a gas powered construction type compressor. Same thing, by the time air pressure got too low to spray, cup was out. JMO If it works for you, great. Maybe I use too much air LOL

 

mine was a ingersol compressor, so that might be why i could do it, i also use a really low presure spray gun, it operates at 8-12 psi....now i have a conventional sata jet gun that runs at 25 psi and it uses a little more air

 

I painted my race car over a period of 2 days with a small 6 gallon 3 HP compresor and had good results but had to do it one panel at a time. I had the car in pieces so it wasen't bad but since the paint was a heavy metalic silver there was a little missmatch from one panel to the next from the metalic laying down different. I was a bodyman for about 10 years so I have a good deal of experience painting but this was the first car I painted in about 15 years. I also used a standard gun and not an HVLP so I am sure that made a difference in air consumption. Not sure it could be done with an HVLP with that small of a compresor. It had a hard time keeping up when I did the roof trunk and Quarters all at once.

 

jay, that's probably the difference. Most backyard shops won't have that type/quality of compressor especially if it's a screw compressor. And I use HVLP as well but probably use a little more pressure. It's what you're used to on pressures and every part of this work.

rayar, as you know it can be done but the quality just isn't there. That box truck I painted was with HVLP and I painted it all at one time. Wasn't a show quality by no means but good enough for it. Owner was amazed. LOL BTW There have been a lot of changes to paint over the past few years. Some things got easier some got harder. Less pigment in paint, crazy three stage, glad I don't paint full time any more.

 

Id quit my job in a heart beat if i could find one that paid and all i had to do was paint. Logging is no where near as fun as body work

 

You'll probably live longer as a logger than a painter. Isocyaniates (sp) are mean and nasty. JMO

 

In 1970 - a relative of mine bought a brand new 70 1/2 Z/28 Camaro off the show room floor in Waynesboro Va off the Chevrolet dealer there.
It was a real nasty color of brown with white stripes.

I really don't think he cared what color it was - as long as it was a standard shift with 3:73 posi rear end. All he wanted to do was go fast.

The police pulled him over for loud pipes and wide tires, the tires stuck out past the fenderwells.

I'm not quite sure about how the story went, but it had something to do with cutting the lip off the quarter panels with a acetylene torch, cutting a 55 gallon drum in half and welding the drum inside of the fender well and flaring a lip on the quarter panel to the edge of the drum - which was slightly out past the edge of the wheels and tires he was using.

They put a half a gallon of Snow White on each quarter panel and some Tiger Hair and block sanded it and spotted it in with a paper and a bomb paint job.
I think the car was less then 6 months old when they did this.

It was what it was - just a beater car that they used to drive to work during the week and drag race on the weekends until it got too expensive..

 

Thanks for the input. Yes, I have no other choice other than to completely strip her down to the bare metal so I can take care of what little rust there is other than the holes I'll be patching in the spring, and there is still some body filler on the roof bow between the tops and the hatch, under which I would assume is bare metal. I'll be practicing the mud work and such on the old quarter and pass fender to get a rough idea. The thing I need help with is an HVLP gun recommendation: My compressor only puts out about 4.6 CFM @ 40 PSI, 3.9 CFM @ 90 PSI, 8.6 CFM max, and I don't have the budget to get either a new one or serious rewiring done to the garage for something bigger. I've planned on using that Rust Bullet that's been advertised here there and everywhere (similar to POR-15) as there is some rust I can't get at with anything short of a sandblaster (underbody) and, as you can see above, I don't have the compressor for it.

 

all i can think of is anest iwata.....they make a gun that runs at like 7 psi, with virtually no over spray at all. Dont remember the model but it was flat black. Im pretty sure your compressor would run it. You probably arent going to want to spend that kind of money on a spray gun. HVLP guns dont use no where near the air of a conventional. Id just hunt up a sharpe hvlp spray gun with a 1.4 mm tip and needle in it. and a cheapo walmart gun for spraying primer it might cost you a grand total of 200 bucks for both of them

 

I'll have to see what I can find on eBay for those. Been snagging good deals lately .

 

lol......at least isocyaniates kill you over time, ive never saw one fall out of the grapple and squash you, or the blade on one kick back and cut your arm off lol

 

I love you. This is the only helpful thread I've read after nights of searching I have found a well thought out, organized and informational guide. Thanks

 

Brandon, the only thing this thread needs is emphasis on practice. Especially on the body work, straightening part. It's a little more than wipe it on and sand it off. Find an old panel and repair some dents on it then paint it. That should give you a good idea what you can and need to do.

Jay, stay safe out in them woods. I wouldn't want your job but sometimes it's good to get into nature. May is comming up, are you going to the gathering?

 

I'm amazed this thread has stayed around this long. But if I helped anybody with it I'm glad. I get around Android email a month 2 or 3 years later. Keep em coming, I no longer own a thirdgen (fiance and building a new house happened) but have no problem helping what little I know.

 

Yeah, I have a hood to practice on actually and I might pick up a junkyard door to practice on aswell. My paint stills looks alright for now though.