I am overhauling my camaro z28. It has already been painted about 8 years ago, but since then I have added a lot of stuff to the car and decided to do another complete teardowna/paint/rebuild.

I will be doing some other overhaul type stuff like finally getting my T-56 rebuilt to handle the power from the F1 powered 390. Powedercoating my rear, or some other type of hard paint for suspention parts. I removed my roll cage becuase I want to have my rear seats be more safe. I will be adding a mini tub, custom dash, custom A-pillar plastic/gauges, custom door arm rests and pannels. Also smoothing firewall, battery trays and redoing the inlet piping for the IC, etc. I have never done body work before so I am starting on the engine bay. In a couple of weeks I will be done with the smoothed out wheel wells, fire wall, trays, etc... At that time I will need to move onto bondo to smooth it all out.

What tools do you guys recomend I get? I don't need top of the line since I am only doing this once and I am not making a show car, just a fun toy. What do you guys recommend? I figure I need a

1. DA sander
2. Sanding blocks maybe
3. Various grit paper for all the work
4. What else...

Thanks.

 

If you've got a big enough air compressor to run a DA, I'd look into getting a straight-line air sander as well. Since most if the body panels are pretty flat on these cars, it works great. I have a cheap Harbor Freight one that works well, but my compressor(33 gallon 1.5HP single stage) has a hard time keeping up with it.

For hand sanding blocks, I just used a small rubber 3m 1/4 sheet one I picked up years ago for wood sanding. It worked well when I did my engine bay, although with all the curves there I did most of it with just my bare hand.

Spot or glazing putty for the small imperfections and pinholes you inevitably get in the bondo after sanding it down.

For rough sanding, I really liked the 3m Gator sandpaper, it cuts for a really long time before wearing out. Plus it has a tacky backside so it holds nice to a hand sanding block, or to itself if you fold it in half for sanding curves with your bare hand.

For small rust patches, a Harbor Freight spot blaster works very well, but does make a mess. And needs refilled a lot due to its small hopper.

 

I actually just "finished" my paint job and I can probably say i worked on the low end of tools, the car only had rust in the battery tray, which was replaced with one from summit. but in no order this is what i used

da sander
loads of paper, for the DA and also i bought rolls of pressure sensitive adhesive paper for sanding down old stuff, primer, filler etc. these came in rolls i just tore off what i needed for the different sized blocks
I agree with 92RS, one of my best friends was a 24" long durablock, most of our panels are straight and the longer the block, the better your results will be
various sized sanding blocks, you will also read that some people use plexiglass sheet from Depot, cut it into different sizes shapes as needed.
hammer and dolly set (harborfrieght works here great)
small welder- im assuming you have one based on the plans to tub
I used three different types of filler, the standard Bondo from autozone for the larger areas that needed smoothing, this is good for the "thicker" repairs, then a polyester glazing putty for the small ripples/rock chip type defects, and the a final last minute type stuff that went on without additive right before paint.

Get yourself a decent HVLP spray gun, again the compressor needs to handle it. Spraying primer isnt all that hard, and most of it gets sanded off so its good to learn on. Also get the cheapo sandable primer from autozone, use this a guide coat when you are sanding the body panels, it will help you see other small imperfections

Lots of masking tape- i used this to help re-create the body waist lines that were gone due to door dings and the like.

Lots of lights, if you dont have good shop lights, nows the time.

If you want any more info, feel free to ask, ill be building my "build thread" here shortly with loads of pictures so you can see what went into it.

Edit-

You will see most of that list are consumables, shop around online for the paper/filler/tape stuff if you can wait you will usually do better than going into a body shop.

And find a good paint supply place for the primer and you color/clear, depending on what you want it will be good to have someone who has used the system explain it to you.

And get ready for the sticker shock of paint, i went primer, base/clear system and my wife still think i am crazy

 

One other tool I forgot to mention that I only recently started using, but works REALLY well, especially if you tend to slop the bondo on like I do. It's a wood rasp, the blade looks like a cheese grater. Use it to rough in the bondo work before it completely sets. Once the bondo hardens, it won't work, but it will save hours of sanding time, and they can be found really cheap.

 

Thanks for the input guys.

To be honest I have more questions now than I did before! Either way, I still have enough work to keep me busy for weeks. Last week, I tack welded a firewall pannel in place on the passenger side. It has holes drilled in a few places. I painted the backside with weld-thru primer. I also painted the wirewall with this as well. I will be filling the gap between them In Frame Rust Proofing paint from Eastwood. Once this dries I will be bondoing it all over to smooth the pannel edges.

I will be doing the battery trays next, then the side pannels to close the engine bay in. Once I am done with all the metal work I will post other questions about filler, tools, etc...

I have a crappy craftsman oilless compressor as well. I am sure it won't keep up well, but I have no choice for now a bigger compressor is not in the cards.

I have pics on my phone, I will see if I can find an easy way to upload them here.

 

I've painted at home before and you can get lucky and get away with a smaller compressor if you have the right HVLP gun or take your time for the compressor to catch up.

It really is best to have a big compressor, but I completely understand not being able to get a new one (since good ones are pretty expensive, then the best ones require 220-240 volts whatever it is and that may require rewiring your garage.)

The paint gun I used was this: http://www.eastwood.com/ew-concours-...parent_id=3637 and it worked very well with my Husky 30 gallon oiled air compressor. This is probably the best bet to use for a paint gun that can keep up with lower cfm compressors like yours most likely is.

Take a look at your specs of the compressor and see what CFM is put out at 45 and 90psi. If its around 6 at 45 and 5 at 90, you should be good to use that gun and get good results.

The only downside to the gun is its expensive.... but its a great gun. I almost went with a home depot HVLP gun, but the required cfm is much higher and I didn't want to risk after all the prep work and money I spent on red paint. If you do want to get a cheaper gun, you might be able to do it, but you'll have to do smaller sections at a time, and it may get tricky doing that. However, it is doable, but it's up to you if you want to take that risk with the paint. It wouldn't be a bad idea to practice painting on large scrap panels or something before to get a feel of whichever gun you decide to go with.

Here's a before/after:



Now, I still have a bit of buffing and orange peel to get out (because I painted outside and it was getting too hot (upper 80's to lower 90's), which caused a bit of the orange peel from the clear drying too fast which spraying), but I know I can get it out, just a bit more work to do.

Good luck on your project though and I'll wait to see your pictures. You will be very satisfied when you get it done if you make sure to take your time and not rush through!

 

Thats a great looking paint job Bubba. And you bring up a good point, spending the coin on a good HVLP gun will make your life lots better, but that can probably wait until you select your paint, the manufacturer will tell you what tip to use and if you do it right, you can buy a gun with the correct tip.

Also, keep your eye out for the Harbor Freight polisher when it goes on sale. I bought the DA version, its a little "pricey" at 55ish bucks, compared the HF rotary versions, but if you havent buffed out a car yet, its almost impossible to burn the paint with the DA.

Also register on autogeek.net, that is where i picked up my buffing compound and polishing compound, Meguires M105 and M205. Those guys have lots of info on wet sanding/buffing/polishing fresh paint. And you end up getting emailed discount codes etc.

 

Thanks tglennon! I purchased a portar cable DA a few years back when I had to repaint the hood of my bronco and got orange peel on it, and I purchased a rotary at Oreillys about a year back because I couldn't get everything out with the DA. My truck's hood isn't 100% perfect from after wetsanding, but it looks pretty good. I have some minor swirls in direct sunlight but it's not too bad. However, the buffing isn't going as well on the camaro!

I've wetsanded about 1/2 to 2/3rds of the car and got it as flat as I want it (in the spots I sanded, I still have more sanding to do but it can wait), but the buffing isn't going as well as I wanted.

I did have the meguirs m105 and m205 combo, but I ran out of the m205 and haven't tried buffing since.

It seemed that after I buffed with the m105 on a red meguires cutting pad (using a rotary), the dull look from the paint being sanded went away, but it was still wasn't very glossy. Then the only thing that seemed to work to get a level of gloss back was using the m205 with the red cutting pad again. I have a yellow meguires buffing pad and a tan polishing one, but the m205 on the red pad seemed to be the only thing getting the shine back. However, I need to go over it a bunch, and its not 100% back to the shine before the sanding.

I don't know if maybe I'm just not giving the yellow pad and the m205 enough time to buff, or if I need to spend more time with the red pad and the m105, then the yellow pad and m205. It seems that the cutting pad is leaving some swirls, but the yellow buffing bad won't take anything out.

I'll have some time tomorrow to get more m205 (I think my paint shop has it) and try to buff it again. Once I get the buffing perfected, I'll wetsand the rest of the orange peel out! I'm currently trying to polish my wheels now though and get the ugly "red" (or almost pink now) off of the wheels I have and paint that part black. Polishing aluminum wheels is quite tedious... and trying to sand the red paint off is impossible. I'll need to pick up some paint stripper tomorrow too.

Anyways, I didn't mean to hijack the thread, hopefully dennisbernal got some good information so far!

 

sounds like you have a good start on it. Sounds like you might be using too much of the M205 and using it too soon, the M105 should get most, like 90+% of the sanding marks out. PM if you want to chat/share outside of this thread.

Either way, Dennis there are some good things in the thread, feel free to keep posting questions as they come up.