Paint and Body Fox Body Painting 101

Guess I'm adding a little more to the budget.

While I'm no pro I have been learning some stuff lately that I thought I'd share.

1. Cleaning your gun and tools is like 45% of painting. The sooner you clean the better. If you plan to keep and reuse mixing cups, after you shoot the first coat, clean the gun. A paper towel and some thinner in a spray bottle will make short work of things.

2. Don't try to use wire wheels to strip paint.. you'll just give yourself a headache.

3. Take the long road. Doing this you'll be faced with a lot of temptation to skip steps or want to take a short cut. So far every time I come close to trying that I triple what I was gonna do in the first place.

4. Be prepared to buy way more sand paper than you guess.

5. If you're learning as you go.. plan on it taking longer and costing more than planned.

6. Lastly , keep the shop vac close by... great way to deal with the dust

I'll add more as I learn it.

So for those of us hobbyist without a stud gun, how would you go around pulling a dent like this? (hard to see I know, small dent from prying with a screwdriver getting the quarter glass out).

That's about what I figured. I've got a rather large dent to fix in the drivers fender that I can get a dolly on (if I can't find a decent set of oe fenders), but no access to the backside of that little one on the quarter (and I really don't want to just bondo right over it, it is rather tiny though). Other than that the car is pretty much straight. trying to find the next thing I can do while I save for parts, and that may just be stripping the shell and epoxying it (since I have all the supplies to do that already)

Ok, more sanding questions. Working on my quarters. Finished all the body work, and did the first block in 180, 4 more coats of high build and now blocking with 320 . I have one spot on one of the edges where I didn't watch what I was doing and rubbed it too thin. Can I get away with a spot prime in that area or should I hit the whole quarter with a couple more coats? There is just one small, maybe the size of a nickel spot . I'd rather do the extra work now if needed.


From there, I was gonna start with 600 wet. Do you do that with a bare hand or small block?

I got other parts to prime so I can use some from then.

Thanks Dave.

Dave,
It's been a long time since I met (kinda met) a guy like you. You really do give a lot of your time to this site and I bet that doesn't stop here. There are few friends that I have who would stop what they are doing to help me. If you lived closer, I bet you'd be one of those guys.

Thanks for all you do Dave.

Here's one more for you Dave. Do I need seem sealer or butyl for where the t top frame meets the roof?