Hey guys im back! after building my old 87 Trans am LT1 on here then selling it i was out for awhile until i picked up this 88 GTA about 2 months ago saving it from the junk yard.

This thread will be all about my journey as i tear into the body over this winter and paint it (first paint job) any advice and input will be greatly appreciated.

The car will stay black with gold GTA emblems in factory locations and will probably do a rim upgrade in the spring.

 

these first pictures are as i found it in a backyard apartment of which it sat for a year and before that it sat down the street in a garage for 8 years.

 

 

The Trans Am Looks So Badass even when its on the Ramp LOL

 

 

 

Subscribed, and looking forward to reading about the resto and paint job.

 

after she has been all cleaned up. paint looks good in pics but has many flaws.

 

looks very decent, are you going to strip it or just sand it down? I'm doing both on mine, it has alot of areas where the CC had peeled off and they are going to metal.

Black is unforgiving... you have your work cut out for you. Good luck with it!!

 

thanks! as of right now i have the drivers side GFX off and door strip molding and badging off. the hood is in primer and the headlight covers are stripped down and ready for primer. im currently using a PPG 2k primer sealer on a harbor freight HVLP gun since im new to this,ill be picking up a new gun soon.

 

thats a sweet trans cant believe somebody let the thing set for years.. Nice find

 

Id like some input on what to do with this. its just surface rust but it is heavy. there are no holes and its solid. should i spot blast it and rust kill it? or cut it out and replace?

 

good question. after doing the hood i just sanded it down and primed it but i was unhappy with the feathering of the paint so im going to try and strip as much of this car as i can to bare metal. im trying not to cut any corners and make it come out nice so i wont be doing it again! the fenders ill start on this week stripping them down with some good old aircraft stripper.

 

I also removed the rear rubber wing since I almost lost it on the highway because there was nothing left to it ill be replacing that with a fiberglass replica.

 

Sand it down with 80 grit until its just metal and nothing orange left, then decide. I had a bunch of surface rust on the roof, but no pitting, and it all sanded down so smooth that you can't see anything at all thru just one layer of primer and no filler at all. I also treated it with rust killer before epoxy priming it since the metal still had some staining to it. Given past experience with some serious roof rust on a car years ago that I didn't prep near as well, I don't expect to see anything come back ever on this car.

 

also have surface rust coming through on the roof in little bubbles that im gonna strip down with 80 grit as you said. as for the quarter i will strip it down further and see what my results are.

 

I'm sorta new at this (again for the umpteenth time) and you might want to look at the JP37x epoxy primer as a first coat. It's good at going over pretty much anything and it has a special love for bare metal. It smells better and is a little less toxic to spray. 8 hour pot life. Sold yet?

I've been using the purple gun too, but I'm thinking of getting the devilbiss starting line setup with two full size guns, two 600cc cups and three tip sizes of 1.3, 1.5 and 1.8. I found it for as low as $130 out there.

 

that sounds like a reasonable price. i will definetly be using an epoxy primer as a base when stripping to bare metal,then i can use a filler primer over epoxy of necessary correct?

 

josh, make sure whatever primer you use is recommended for use over bare metal. Most 2k primers are build primers and not used over bare metal. Do like the man said and get some epoxy primer. I like the Summit 1:1 epoxy myself.

 

Yes

 

 

the hood is the only thing ive sprayed so far and it was over filler and prepped paint i was aware that the 2k primer does not belong over bare metal. ill have to pick up some good epoxy primer. some recomendations without breaking the bank?

ill check out the summit 1:1 thanks

 

Personally, I really like the Summit primers and paints... I did my Nova start to finish with Summit. My IROC will be all Summit paint too except for the base coat which will most likely be Chroma Base from Dupont.

 

some other spots of damage



also rust on LF fender but again nothing serious.




headlight covers stripped bare.

 

thats good to hear. and at $50 a gallon thats a great price. i paid just aboyut 45 dollars just on a quart of 2k PPG

 

You should be able to put anything in the product line on top of it along with regular bondo type fillers and glazing putty. Just read the datasheets and you'll be fine. Epoxy is cool because it's a good base for bare metal and you can basically create a new sealed surface anytime you want by putting another layer on top of whatever you've got going on.

 

Really now, that's interesting. It looks amazing. Is it single stage or base/clear?

 

From what I just checked most of summits base is a single stage rather than 2 stage. I was told by a few that if I want a good gloss that im better off sticking with a base clear.

 

You can repair that bumper cover.... It will take time and love.... You may want a bodyshop to actually complete that repair for you for a long lasting repair. There are a few different ways to repair plastic bumper covers nowadays.

 

I think they also have base and clear paint as well. They don't shine much more than that nova does, whatever it is.

I keep reading and hearing that base/clear is the way to go for your first time. I was pretty skeptical at first since it's another step to mess up, but apparently it actually makes it easier to stop and correct mistakes along the way. I'm going to be finding out soon if the weather holds out. I'm going to paint my deck lid with base and clear to see how it goes.

 

Mine was single stage on the Nova. You can get away with that on non metallics. With metallics base/clear is the only way to go and that is whats going on the IROC. I'll be using the Summit High Solids clear, I'll let you know if its any good.

Any paintjob that is sanded flat and buffed correctly is going to have that deep, wet look. The sanding and buffing is what makes it possible to have a great looking garage paintjob because it gets rid of any dust that lands on top of the wet paint.

Check this out...it was my first auto paint job. Hood from my sons 95 Camaro. OMNI single stage black urethane. It looked like crap when I sprayed it... the sanding and buffing can fix alot!

 

Wow, that looks better than I thought you could get with SS paint and using omni no less. That's pretty convincing. I might try some of that on my truck since I have no plans to use metallic on it. I still can't get over you using summit paint on that nova, hard to believe how black and deep it is.

 

Last car I had painted before the Nova cost me $700 just for the sealer,base and clear...it was all Dupont, the total job ran $4K. YIKES! I'm very happy with the Summit paint and it was cheap enough that when I made a mistake (and there were plenty of do-overs!!) it wasnt such a big deal as it could have been with high dollar paint. Acrylic Urethane is Acrylic Urethane as far as i can tell. I had Glasurit on the nova previously for 19 years, it was single stage red... looked like day one. I was sick of the color and it needed some fine tuning on the body work.

If the car is going to be garaged, you could put tractor paint on it and it would hold up for years...but thats a topic for another thread!!

 

So Dupont is real proud of their stuff too then. I saw the red paint pictures, it looked good then too. Did you remove the red, or paint over it?

Yeah, I think I'll pass on the tractor paint. I've seen some nice paint jobs with that paint, but I put some Krylon rust tough on a panel a couple of weeks ago just to keep it dry overnight and had a horrid time getting it off. Anywhere it was on bare metal it seemed to bond to it. I ended up using aircraft stripper on it to harden up what didn't strip off so I could sand it down. The epoxy sticks nice, but it sands off too when you want. The krylon had other ideas about sandability.

 

The first time we had the Nova painted in '93, we stripped it down to bare metal. This time I didnt need to do that because the paint was in great shape and it was only one paintjob. I sanded with 180 and then sprayed epoxy and started blocking from there. I did use some hi build on it too, but looking back that was a waste, I could have just used epoxy the whole way thru. The body was straight just needed a real good blocking. It was a learning experience... the Camaro will be easier because I have a better idea how to go about everything.

 

Ill consider that,I've been told that you can use a polyurethane plastic to repair these as well? I know there are a few different company's that make repair kits that they sell at the parts store too id like to be able to do everything myself on this project and keep it a learning expierence for the future.

 

Ah very good, it looks incredible. I thought it looked great when it was red, but I can see how you might want a change after a while. The blue on my camaro is getting a little too familiar too, but a color change is way too much work and I want to keep it original, so I'll probably just go back on the outside with what came on it, hopefully with allot more shine though. Even new, my car didn't have allot of depth or shine. I never had it buffed, and maybe that's why it didn't have as much gloss as it could have. Maybe they painted it on a rainy day, who knows.

 

for that crack in the bumper, drill a hole just above where the crack in, make a clean cut to the hole but do not go pass the hole. Get some drywall tape from lowes, home depot,etc... put that on the back of the bumper then cover it with this:http://semproducts.com/product-catal...pair-material/. Let that that dry, make sure you push the crack together so it will stay, then once the back side is dry, do the same to the front. As far as all the spider webs in it, get some sem bumper stripper and the best thing to use to scrape the paint off is this: http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/web...chTerm=scraper. Do not use the metal blades, only the plastic ones. The just sand the rest off with 180 or 80 grit. Spray it with sem flexible primer

 

primer: http://www.summitracing.com/parts/smm-39134
repair putty: http://www.autobodytoolmart.com/sem-...7-p-19642.aspx
here is a good primer kit for the car: http://www.summitracing.com/parts/smm-ml010

 

Looks like some great info.

Guess ill have to go and pick up some epoxy primer this week and start stripping and sanding before anything else.

Is it ok to apply filler over epoxy primer if needed? I've heard mixed ideas on this.

 

Most things I've seen say it's fine to use filler over epoxy. Maybe scuff it up some, especially if it's been a couple days since you painted. I haven't experienced any problems doing it on my truck. The filler feathers out like nobody's business, so I figure it must be pretty well attached to the epoxy. I've noticed that if I drop a blob and it happens to just tack to the surface, no pressing into it at all, it still sticks and has to be sanded off when it hardens. You can't just snap it loose from the surface, it seems to do something chemically to make the bond.

 

as long you wait till the epoxy is completely dry, then just sand/scuff it to give it a good base to attach to

 

subcribed

 

Subscribed!
As long as no one mentions Rustoleum I'm in on this one. Looks like a great starting point.

 

Haha nope! No rustoleum on this one! Although I was using a rustoleum aircraft stripper tonight if that counts! But the paint I wont be cheaping out on.

Tonight I started stripping part of the drivers side fender and got the headlight covers in some self etching primer,I've decided that im gonna need alot more aircraft stripper than I thought since there are 3 layers of paint on this thing. Ill go buy a gallon of stripper this week and just brush it on. Is this what others have done? What works best for you?

 

I like 80 grit on a DA sander myself, then I run over it again with and orbital sander and 80 grit. There really is no super fast way to do it. Bad thing about a DA sander is you need a big compressor to run one efficiently... I have 80 gallons and it does ok... I'll give it a break from time to time and use the orbital (electric). I personally dont like chemical stripper on a car with a bunch of plastic and urethane pieces... I'd be worried about it getting on the wrong part and eating it. It can be pretty messy. You will find also, if you go over an area with a sander first to open up the paint the stripper will do even better.

Im at a similar stage as you. I have all the GFX, door handles etc off the IROC and am stripping areas that had peeling paint (about 50% of the car), the other sections have still nice factory paint and they will just be sanded not stripped. The whole car will be epoxy primed.

 

Im in the same boat only im working with a 15 gallon compressor right now lol so an electric sander is all I have at the moment pretty soon ill upgrade before I paint the car but its fine for panel priming/painting. So far I like the stripper much better than sanding it all off because there isn't so much dust and I can control where the stripper goes. All my gfx are also off in the area of which im working.

 

Small update, i started stripping the fender and now its almost done,but damn is it alot of scrapping and cleaning. I did also manage to get the door stripped of its components like mirror, window sweeps, lock and door handle as well as the door GFX. unfortunetly most of the screws that hold the GFX on broke off so ill have to replace those but i cant say im surprised.

 

Looking good man, I got epoxy sprayed on mine tonight...worked 2 ...12 hour days on it this weekend... Its a ton of work!!!

 

awesome man i just followed up on your thread i wanna see some updates! you just sanded the whole car with 80 grit on a DA?