My body & paint restoration thread

[Sylvan]

Well, I feel like I'm getting down to the last stretch before I can start priming in anticipation of new paint. In the 4th quarter now, so close, yet so far. I'm doing a lot of the little BS stuff like removing overspray from a previous owner's failed attempts to paint, and to quote one of my favorite movies, "nothing has ever sucked this much ass." It's really tedious, but liberal amounts of paint thinner and scotch-brite pads seem to be doing the trick.

I'm not really sure what I was thinking when I bought this car. It's clear that I wasn't thinking. It was in pretty sorry shape, and needed a ton of work, but at least it ran OK. My lack of experience with body and paint work probably let me to believe this would be an easy task, but I was wrong. It's long, tedious, and I don't have the big shop facilities to just blast the hell out of this thing so I am mostly doing it by hand in my little garage with small power tools.

Well, here's a good BEFORE shot:



I know, I know, what was I thinking... Anyway, here's after some sanding, when I started to realize how much of a pain in the ass this job was going to be:



Some more sanding later, and here's sort of where I am now:





I'm actually farther along than this but I don't have more recent pictures. Luckily I don't think I'm going to have to respray the engine bay or the frunk area, I'm just cleaning those up from overspray and I'll be keeping it factory white. It's a 91 but I have a set of 94 taillights and spoiler, and I'm planning to add a 93+ front lip to round out the package.

So, that's that... I'll probably be updating this thread periodically. I don't know yet if I'll be spraying this in my little condo garage, or wait until I move into a house later this year. But hopefully I don't lose motivation. I don't get much time to work on the car because I work a lot of hours and am doing school part-time. Wish me luck!

[Davis]

Good work man, I'm looking forward to your progress.

[SW21T]

Looks great man, I'm doing the same to the MKI I got but my gun messed up so everything is on hold untill I can get ahold of one, can't wait to see more progress

[Sylvan]

Here, inside the frunk, is an example of some of the crap I'm dealing with. It looks like some major overspray, but underneath it is a gummy layer of something with a wax-like consistency. I don't know what it is, but paint stripper does a good job removing it without damaging the paint underneath.

Example before:


After doing some work on the passenger side:


It's coming along, slowly but surely.
Maybe next week, I'll tackle the rest of the frunk. This one might just end up getting re-sprayed. Oh, the horror!