Ok, here we go. I've been working on the car for a couple days and have some pictures.
I'm trying to decide exactly how to do this. It'll be part showing you progress and part tutorial for y'all.
I'll just get started, how about that?
Here's the car. This is what I saw when the guy started asking for my help. It's a '62 Impala SS convertible with a 409. It's totally factory optioned out. It will have a value of roughly $125k when I'm finished. Before the guy working on it realized what a massive job he had undertaken, he had stripped the doors, fenders and hood and sprayed a couple coats of epoxy primer on the bare metal. This may be a problem later. I'll explain later.
The intent is to make this an absolute stunner of a car. I won't be doing the bodywork, of which I'm both thankful and worried at the same time. Once I have the panels stripped and epoxy primered, I wait on the bodyman to do his work. I have given him stern warnings of what I expect. I will block this vehicle completely at least five times with varying grits of sandpaper.
This car was restored somewhere in it's past. A complete strip and refinish.
So it was restored, what's the problem?
The entire vehicle developed bubbles in the paint job. Bubbles are bad. Here's a couple pictures as i went through the layers stripping it to show you exactly where the trouble came from. As you can see, the various layers have a stain in them. The rocker panels were so bad that I mistakingly thought the previous refinisher had sprayed a rocker chip guard!
Getting close to the metal you can see the little surface rust spots that where everywhere on this vehicle.
So, if you see bubbles in your paint job, just start shaking your head
and say to yourself quietly, "Sht, Sht, SHT!".
In this car's case, the fault lays solely on the previous restorer. In order to have this level of problem with bubbling paint, they had to wait WAY too long to seal it up with a paint. From the amount of bondo that I had to remove, I would say they might have had this car in bare metal for a month or more.
Soooo, our first lesson! When stripping a panel to metal, do not let it set for any period of time without some sort of coating. ANY PERIOD OF TIME. Zero!
The stripping phase of refinishing is a time to be ultra careful. Bare metal will begin to rust to some degree almost instantaneously once exposed to the environment. Look at the pictures above again. This WILL happen to you.
When I've stripped the panels on my blue car, if they sat for anytime before I begin the straightening stage, I will sand them again with 180 grit to remove the flash rust and wax and grease remove them before I spread any mud.
Another key point! Wear gloves when you're finishing the stripping stage and are preparing to coat the bare metal. Your funky skin will leave oils on the panel that will bubble up the paint just like rust. The way you'll know is that you'll have a hand shaped bubble print in your paint job. Seriously.
I have stripped the rear end almost complete this week.
For some reason I didn't take a picture with the right quarter stripped too. Normally as I strip a panel I will stop and epoxy primer it to prevent contamination. What's different about this job is that Sikkens has a wipe that coats the metal with a metal prep ( a type of acid etch). I'm trying these out with the theory that they will provide a minimal protection for the metal.
Understand, you don't want to have an etch on the bare metal and use an epoxy on top of it. The acid will break down the epoxy. They do not mix.
What I will do is remove the etch prior to primering with the epoxy. I'll do this through sanding and sandblasting. With this vehicle, stripping it is so time consuming I decided that the time involved with reprepping the panel is worth the small effort it will take.
The previous restorers (PR), in my opinion, didn't restore a '62 Impala SS. They took an Impala SS and covered the entire body with layer after layer of mud and carved out something that looked like an Impala SS.
Some parts of the body had over 1/2" of mud. Absolutely crazy. Anyplace you see bare metal on it now had a layer of bondo on it that I stripped.
My next step tomorrow will be to finish up the details of stripping the quarters and decklid and get them in primer. I will be removing the decklid (trunk) and strip the jambs as well.
The PR coated this poor car in two separate coats of polyester primer, a high build urethane primer, and ALL of that mud. The jambs won't be easy.
BTW, I'm using my 8" hog to do the main stripping of the car with 80 grit sandpaper.
That's it for today, or yesterday I guess now. I have been leaving work at five and going to work on this vehicle afterwards.
Tomorrow is Saturday, I'll spend the whole day with the car. I'll finish stripping the back end and get it in primer. I'll post tomorrow night.
I'm trying to decide exactly how to do this. It'll be part showing you progress and part tutorial for y'all.
I'll just get started, how about that?
Here's the car. This is what I saw when the guy started asking for my help. It's a '62 Impala SS convertible with a 409. It's totally factory optioned out. It will have a value of roughly $125k when I'm finished. Before the guy working on it realized what a massive job he had undertaken, he had stripped the doors, fenders and hood and sprayed a couple coats of epoxy primer on the bare metal. This may be a problem later. I'll explain later.
The intent is to make this an absolute stunner of a car. I won't be doing the bodywork, of which I'm both thankful and worried at the same time. Once I have the panels stripped and epoxy primered, I wait on the bodyman to do his work. I have given him stern warnings of what I expect. I will block this vehicle completely at least five times with varying grits of sandpaper.
This car was restored somewhere in it's past. A complete strip and refinish.
So it was restored, what's the problem?
The entire vehicle developed bubbles in the paint job. Bubbles are bad. Here's a couple pictures as i went through the layers stripping it to show you exactly where the trouble came from. As you can see, the various layers have a stain in them. The rocker panels were so bad that I mistakingly thought the previous refinisher had sprayed a rocker chip guard!
Getting close to the metal you can see the little surface rust spots that where everywhere on this vehicle.
So, if you see bubbles in your paint job, just start shaking your head
and say to yourself quietly, "Sht, Sht, SHT!".In this car's case, the fault lays solely on the previous restorer. In order to have this level of problem with bubbling paint, they had to wait WAY too long to seal it up with a paint. From the amount of bondo that I had to remove, I would say they might have had this car in bare metal for a month or more.
Soooo, our first lesson! When stripping a panel to metal, do not let it set for any period of time without some sort of coating. ANY PERIOD OF TIME. Zero!
The stripping phase of refinishing is a time to be ultra careful. Bare metal will begin to rust to some degree almost instantaneously once exposed to the environment. Look at the pictures above again. This WILL happen to you.
When I've stripped the panels on my blue car, if they sat for anytime before I begin the straightening stage, I will sand them again with 180 grit to remove the flash rust and wax and grease remove them before I spread any mud.
Another key point! Wear gloves when you're finishing the stripping stage and are preparing to coat the bare metal. Your funky skin will leave oils on the panel that will bubble up the paint just like rust. The way you'll know is that you'll have a hand shaped bubble print in your paint job. Seriously.
I have stripped the rear end almost complete this week.
Understand, you don't want to have an etch on the bare metal and use an epoxy on top of it. The acid will break down the epoxy. They do not mix.
What I will do is remove the etch prior to primering with the epoxy. I'll do this through sanding and sandblasting. With this vehicle, stripping it is so time consuming I decided that the time involved with reprepping the panel is worth the small effort it will take.
The previous restorers (PR), in my opinion, didn't restore a '62 Impala SS. They took an Impala SS and covered the entire body with layer after layer of mud and carved out something that looked like an Impala SS.
Some parts of the body had over 1/2" of mud. Absolutely crazy. Anyplace you see bare metal on it now had a layer of bondo on it that I stripped.
My next step tomorrow will be to finish up the details of stripping the quarters and decklid and get them in primer. I will be removing the decklid (trunk) and strip the jambs as well.
The PR coated this poor car in two separate coats of polyester primer, a high build urethane primer, and ALL of that mud. The jambs won't be easy.
BTW, I'm using my 8" hog to do the main stripping of the car with 80 grit sandpaper.
That's it for today, or yesterday I guess now. I have been leaving work at five and going to work on this vehicle afterwards.
Tomorrow is Saturday, I'll spend the whole day with the car. I'll finish stripping the back end and get it in primer. I'll post tomorrow night.
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