Well, I think it may finally be time to look at getting my car painted, or at least some body work.
Now, here's my biggest question- the guy I bought this car from told me it's been repainted twice (once because it was keyed, once because of acid rain, he said).
Now the clearcoat & paint is peeling/bubbling in several places.
Will I have to have this car completely stripped before it can be painted again? I don't even wanna think about how much that will probably cost...
Depends on how the paint is underneath. I've seen some cars that have been painted 5-6 times that look great and you couldn't even tell they had been painted that many times (until you looked in the door jamb really close ;) ). It depends on the prep work. If it was me and I had the $$$ I would have it taken down to bare metal and re-done. That does cost a lot of $$$ though......
Well, from what I can see, it looks like the most recent coat if paint is separating from the earlier paint, hence the bubbling and peeling, as you can see paint under areas where the top layer of paint has come off. I think whoever painted it didn't prep it correctly.
I that case at least the current layer of paint is going to have to come off. If it doesn't then they layer that goes on next will do the same thing.
60-80 grit on a DA sander took 3 coats off of my brothers nova
then 120-200 to fine tune things
I think I'm gonna run by a couple body shops and get an estimate on getting the whole thing done and painted.
It needs the driver's side door and fender replaced (which I would do) and a dent pulled out of the quarter right behind the driver's side door. Also needs the bottom of the rear quarters behind the rear wheels fixed.
Otherwise, it probably just needs sanded down and resprayed.
Why the driver's door and fender? Dented or something?
You know I figure in a few years (or now) we're going to have to start pulling dents out of doors and fenders and/or welding in new metal to replace rust as doors and fenders are scarce..........
bubbling and peeling= need for stripping the defective paint off be it sanding or media blasting.
Most paint and body places are charging because of the labor. If you can do some of the preliminary basic grunt stuff by removing the bad paint, that should save your wallet some pain. And Capt Obvious says, don't leave the metal bare.
you can strip an entire car in about 8 hrs
Use a dewalt buffer grinder at low rpm with 80 grit. (you can use it to buff afterwards also)
the low rpm wont distort the metal
use a blaster to get into door jambs and rockers only
then epoxy prime
do body work and reprime any body work
if its been a while after the epoxy (more than 36 hrs), you have to scuff it before you paint
If you don't want to prime it, you something like picklex to protect the metal after stripping it