Jay Axson

Let me preface any advice I may give with, I am not a car or autobody professional by any means. However I am a technical person who usually turns his own wrench. I know a little something about bodywork, and did some when I was a young man 20+ years ago. Some lessons had to be re-learned in this project.

The first thing I will tell you If you want quality expect to spend about $500 - $1000 on materials alone. Plus you will likely need to buy some tools you don’t have as well. The next thing I will tell you is you should seriously consider finding a good high quality shop to actually lay down the base coat and clear coat if you can afford it

If you do the prep, you need a lot of patience. Take your time. I have probably 50-70 hours into it and 15-20 more to go before it is all done and I am driving it again.

I will tell that if you do it right, it is a lot more work than you originally think. You will need another car for your daily driver while you are working on it.

I originally intended to fully paint the car myself, in my garage. After I put my 70 hours in and went thru the actual masking/spraying process for the primer, I decided that I had way too much time into the prep, not the proper environment, nor the experience to guarantee the results I wanted. So I decided to have an experienced pro lay down the base coat and clear. I am expecting to pay $1000 to $1200 which breaks down as $400 or so for materials and 2 days labor to mask, paint, clear sand/polish the car at $40 an hour for labor

Here is the quick lowdown of what needs to happen:

Figure out how much of a quality paint job you want, how much time, and how much money your willing to pour into it. My total “makeover” will be just under 3 grand. This included things beyond paint like paint tools, big brake upgrade, slotted and drilled rotors, and some used chrome z06 replicas from craigslist. The paint related only items fall in at about $1500-$1600 plus my time.

Advice: Put all the bolts/nuts/fasteners you remove in well labeled zip lock baggies. You will need a set of “star” sockets as many of the fastener bolts are of this type.

Jay Axson

You decide what you want to remove, I removed the following parts:

• Rear fascia (I think this is a must for a quality paint job on a C4 as it butts up against the car body with no gap. New paint will form a bridge that will crack once the car bends, like opening a painted shut window in your house) Figure 3-5 hours to remove, it is bit of a puzzle. You need to remove the license plate stuff, then you can get behind the tail lights, and then the gas lid area 1st. You will need to go thru all these areas to access the bolts holding on the bumper. The worst was the two bolts connecting the bumper to the rear quarters just behind the wheels. You need to go thru the wheel wells to get to them. You will need a deep socket 10mm (I think), I didn’t have one and had to use an open end wrench blind in the hole. Cost me an extra 1.5 hours easily.
  
• Front fascia. (It’s really hard to paint under the car and it goes back a good 1.5 feet. No gap, but if you jack it up you’ll see repaint tell tales if you don’t pull it off . Plus you know it’s been scraped to ah hell from 20 years of hitting parking barriers and high incline driveways) 2.5 hours to remove.
  
• Side fenders (easy to remove, depending on year really suck to sand which will be easier to do if off of car) 0.5 hours to remove.
  
• Bottom kick board runner things under the doors. (Really hard to work on these as they are under the car, so I pulled them) WARNING there is a hidden bolt towards the rear wheel from behind, you need to get at it by removing rear wheel well bolts and reaching inside, 10mm. I broke the nut thru the fiberglass underbody on the first one I removed. Wasn’t happy but a washer should fix on re-assembly) 1hour to remove.
  
• Headlight covers top and bottom. I guess you can paint with these on, but they don’t take much effort to remove and it’s easier to mask) 0.75 hour remove
  
• Door mirrors – tuff call I removed them. Not as easy as it looks. You need to remove the door panels. The two Door mirror bolts are easy, but the cable sucks. Real hard to undo cable from fastener that is inside the door about a foot in towards the jam. It’s one of those fasteners that snapped shut but can be opened by skewing the top part away from the bottom, sliding the top out of the grove it snapped into. You will need this fastener intact to keep the window from hitting the power mirror wire once re-assembled. Also, to get the door panel plastic lock finger thingy off, it just snaps outward away from the door towards the interior of the car to remove. This isn’t obvious. There are some hidden screws in there. If you have a service manual, the diagrams will help to locate them. Figure 2 hours to remove mirrors.
  
• Molding/Belt – Pretty easy to remove. Once the nuts on the edges of the doors are removed, the inside connectors just pop out of the doors.
  
• Outside door window weather seals – There is no way you can remove these and salvage them for reuse from what I can tell. Either leave them on or figure on replacing them. If you have the mirrors off you already have access to them for removal. BE CAREFULL! They are riveted in. You will need to drill the 3 rivets out. The middle rivet is a lot closer to the door skin than the others. I accidently drilled a small hole through my door! Fortunately it wasn’t a big deal to fix when I already had the filler out for the low spots and bumper repair. My research on the forum said buy real GM replacements. I found them on E-Bay for about $100 shipped, aftermarkets from midamerica were like $65.
  
• Weatherstripping –It’s already cracked and a mess, why paint around it when it needs replaced anyway? Now is the time to do it. Yeah it sucks to toss another $350-$400 into it. You’ll probably mess up the door weatherstrip anyway when removing the outer door seals. The forum research showed Willcox to be the best bang for the buck with proper fit, about $350 for the kit. Other kits of same price or higher from other retailers had fit issues so it’s a no brainer. Best option is original GM for $750 or more. Willcox for me. The old stuff doesn’t want to come off the forward side of the A-piller. The rear hatch was just pulled of easy. I won’t do the doors, targa, and winidshield until after the car is painted. I even removed the trim the weatherstrip mounted to on the a-pillar so I could clean up the glue with a wire wheel and we didn’t have to paint around it. Maybe Overkill. Figure 3-4 hours.
  
• Doors – If you want to do the jams right you need to pull them. I am staying with the same color and my car is parked outside, so I decided to not paint the jams and leave the doors on. The removal of the power door mirror wire really sealed the deal on this decision. I really didn’t want to find out how many hours it was going to take to unhook the wiring and reinstall later. Plus the doors line up really nicely, I could imagine hours spent trying to get the gaps to look right again on reinstall.
  
• Hood – I left it on as well

Jay Axson

Ok now you have taken it apart, or not, now what?

Short answer is sand, sand, filler, sand, filler, sand, filler, and sand.

Ok the filler is to fix the areas where you either had to or accidently sanded into the fiberglass (SBC).

This would be a good time to briefly discuss what your car is made of. The majority of it is SMC fiberglass (Hood, door skins, read quarters), the bumpers or “fascias” are made of TPU ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermop..._polyurethanes) , and a few parts like the gas lid and mirrors are aluminum. WARNING – body filler approved for one of these materials may not work on another. It may look like it works and develop problems later. I read a post where a professional shop used glaze putty on the SMC fiberglass door and a year or so later the paint was bubbling off. Scared the crap out of me as I didn’t question some advice given to me and used some polyester filler, originally purchased to fix a crack in my rear TPU bumper, to fill in some low spots on the SMC fiberglass. It was not specifically approved for fiberglass and I thought I was going to have to sand it all off and redo at a cost of 1-2 days work. I finally got to one of the manufacturer’s chemists and got a thumbs up; I got lucky. Make sure you use the right stuff on the right material or all your hard work might fall apart later.

Sanding!
ANOTHER WARNING: Do not sand anything until you have thoroughly washed the surface and used Wax and Grease remover. The W&G is important as paint and silicone (wax & grease) do not react well together. If you sand wax into the old paint and paint over it bad results could happen. It only takes a ˝ hour to wipe it clean, why risk it. Use many paper towels always in to sets, one hand to apply in a small area, and the other to wipe clean. Throw both towels out and do the next section. Do Not reuse a contaminated towel on a clean area or you will be putting the wax back on!



Hint: Use Dawn dishwashing soap whenever you wet sand or in any other washing process during the prep work.

Jay Axson

The way I see it, there are three ways to paint a car, the scuff and shoot, the sand and shoot, or the strip and shoot.

Scuff and shoot - well no need to take any parts off. Just go to the autobody supply and buy some scotchgard pads. Scuff the whole thing, mask and spray! Easy, but it will probably not hold up for very long. Just give it to Maaco, they will F it up less for less. There are some who have had good luck doing the prep and giving it to Maaco for final shoot. Depends on the franchise and the painter I guess, they do shoot fast all day long. Usually they let it dry in a dusty environment. Maybe pay a tad extra to get them to let it cure in the booth for an extra 20 mins.

Strip and shoot - I never did this, but it basically means sanding or chemically removing all the original paint and primer before bodywork/paintwork. I’ve heard bad stories where the stripping chemical residue gassed up and ruined an otherwise beautiful paint job. So if you go this route research it well.

Sand and Shoot – Option I went with. It comes in a few flavors. Basically you use an air compressor to drive a D/A sander (Dual Action) to dry sand the whole paint job down with 320 grit abrasive disks. They are self adhesive and come in roll for about $23; they just stick to the DA sander pad. Using a D/A is very important, don’t use an orbital sander, grinder, belt or anything else other than maybe your hand.

RE_WARNING: Do not sand anything until you have thoroughly washed the surface and used Wax and Grease remover.

Here are some pics ˝ way thru my first pass. Here you can see the D/A sander sitting on the hood.




When removing paint chips, you need to feather out the edges of the sand area to the rest of the paint. Rule of thumb, If you get ˝ inch of feather per existing paint layer your good. No less than 1/4 Inch.

Here we have the 180 grit paint chips sanded out in spots and ˝ of the car 320 sanded.













Here are some of the small parts sanded.



Be very careful at a hard edge lines , anywhere a part forms a gap with another. I didn’t realize this and I had made a low spot on the edge where the hood meets the front bumper. I had to use a little bit of filler and a lot of hand sanding to repair the edge line.


Do NOT leave a single shiny spot of paint on the car as new paint will not stick to shiny old shiny paint left behind. I used steel wool and folded up sanding disks (as that what was handy.) to get into the nooks and crannies. When I washed it after the 1st pass saw all the shiny spots I missed and covered up by dust. I had to D/A sand the whole car a second time.

Jay Axson

Bodywork repairs:

Fill in any low spots. If you can feel it you will see it in the final paint! My car is black and it is the most revealing color (white being the least) , it will show every imperfection. Rub the palm of your hand flat and if it doesn’t feel just like the non-problem areas you need to do more work. If you think you notice anything at all, you need more work! If it is low you need to add a thin layer of filler. Follow the instructions, but in general you mix up a small golf ball amount of filler with a line of hardener an inch long until it is a uniform color; usually pink. Use a plastic spreader to apply right away. It should go on smooth and creamy, don’t mess with it too much. It hardens pretty quick, leave it alone once it starts to harden. If you have more low spots, mix up a new batch rather than trying to force what is just starting to be un-creamy. You will be tempted – don’t do it!

I had a several paint chip areas that went past paint into the glass, I used my D/A to sand them smooth but created a low spot. Also, I had a 5” crack in the rear bumper where I was tapped a bit too hard in a parking lot.

Here is the Urethane weld I made in the back side of the bumper. BTW, TPU is one of the worst plastics to have to weld. I had to mail order specific urethane plastic welding rods from http://www.urethanesupply.com/storepolyurethane.php and used a Harbor Freight plastic welder http://www.harborfreight.com/welding...ure-96464.html



On the front I used http://semproducts.com/Catalog.asp?prod=117

I also used this stuff on my SMC Fiberglas, but in hindsight I would have bought something more engineered for SMC, although SEM chemist’s say I am good to go.

Here are some shots of the repaired fascia,








Wet sand all these “filled in” areas with 320 wet sandpaper (the black sheets). Use a block to wet sand with, not your bare hand. You have many options to buy hard and flexible blocks of many different styles. You can also use a carpenter’s pencil or other straight object if you like. Just wrap the paper around it.

Jay Axson

Primer Time!
Once dry sanded to 320 and lowspots are filled and perfected with a block wet sand of 320. It is time to mask and prime it.

Re-Re-WARNING: Do not prime anything until you have thoroughly washed the surface and used Wax and Grease remover!

Use two paper towels at a time, 1 to apply the W/G remover and another to wipe off. Then throw them away. For these fender sections I used probably 6 wads of paper towels. Never use the wipe towel to go back over something already wiped as you are smearing the silicone back over it.



Most of the little parts are done being wiped.


Now the bumpers:

http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/z...6-12174900.jpg


I started with the small detached parts and bumpers:





Next I had to prep the garage. I used the plastic masking sheeting I bought from local the auto paint supplier to drape my garage.




Here I am masking the mirrors. Note that requires a bit more thought than you would think to create the paint line. I taped inside first.


Then I laid new tape over the extended tape sticky to sticky side.


When done the inside and the glass is well masked, but leaves the curved part of the edge exposed for spray..




Primer Builder:
I used a high build 2K urethane primer (Mar Hyde brand) A gallon should be more than enough. 2K means it comes in 2 parts, the paint and the catalyst. You will need to thoroughly mix the base paint then add to a paint mixing cup.





The instructions said use 4 parts paint to 1 part catalyst. As an option use another 1 part reducer. So find the 4:1:1 table on the cup. Now estimating the amount of paint you need add the paint up to one of the lines in the left column. For simplicity sake I chose 4. But I could have chosen any other number 2, 3, 7 whatever.



Now add the catalyst. Whatever amount you chose in paint, use the second column to measure the proper ratio. In my case it as 4:1 and I put in enough paint to reach level 4 so I added enough catalyst to reach level 4 in the next column.



This can be seen in more detail this you tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbywJIEYNfQ

The paint I used gave two options High Build which was 4:1 (Paint to catalyst) or Normal Build 4:1:1 (Paint, Catalyst, Urethane reducer) I started to shoot with the first option as I relied on the supply house and the clerk didn’t discuss the reducer and just pulled the paint and catalyst off the shelf. Anyway I started to shoot the small parts with this 4:1 option and it was too thick and was drying in the air before it hit the panel. It felt rough like sand paper. I had to go to 4:1:2 mix before it laid down right. The few parts I hit with the earlier mixture required a lot of extra sanding and some needed re-primed.

Always use a paint filter when adding the paint to the gun. You should wear rubber gloves and a respirator mask. My understanding is there are toxins in the paint that can be absorbed through the skin and head straight to the liver.



I hung plastic masking sheeting all around the garage and kept one of the garage doors open. I also used duct tape to seal the gap between the door and door frame which leads into the house.

Jay Axson

Ready to Shoot:

Just before you shoot anything wipe it down with a tack cloth, also found at your local auto paint supply shop. This will lift any dust that has accumulated between washing the part and mixing the paint.

I laid down two coats. Be sure to let the paint flash for the amount of time in the directions before adding another coat.









Here is how the mirror worked out.



All the little stuff is done.


Next came the bumpers:





Then finally the car. Here is how I masked it. I used a mix of the same plastic sheeting and freezer wrap. The freezer wrap worked really well in areas where I needed more rigidity than the thin plastic offered, such as the headlight area and the back hatch.











Now for the primer / builder.

Jay Axson

Wet Sand!

Next we need to block wetsand the car. I used 320 grit for the 1st pass and 600 for a second pass. This might have been overkill, some say one pass of 400 is fine. First I applied a guide coat of black. You can use a spray can of primer if you wish. The auto paint supplier had spray cans of special guide coat from SEM that wouldn’t clog the paper as much, so I used that. The purpose of the guide coat is to help you identify any high or low spots as well to make sure you don’t miss any sections.

Try to use the block wherever you can. If you use your hands you can leave finger groves that can be seen in the final finish. Some of the tight areas and small parts you have no choice but to use your hands. Try to move your hand side to side instead of front to back to minimize the chance of finger groves.

Tip Don't forget the dawn soap. It will help keep the sandpaper form clogging. You will need to wash off the sandpaper to unclog every couple minutes. Change to new paper every so often. I probably used 3 or 4 1/2 sheets on the hood. Maybe 1 or 2 1/2 sheets on a door to give you an idea.





OK here she is all sanded and ready to go to the paint both for sealer, color, clear, final wetsand and polish.

Jay Axson

That's all for now. It's going into the shop next week to be painted. When I get it back I will upload some more pics.

Jay

CorvetteMike2024

Jay Axson

Hi Mike, you have a ton more experiance than I do. I know you don't like to comment on paint threads anymore. But please feel to correct anything I may have said wrong or there are alternative ways. I wouldn't want to misguide anyone.

CorvetteMike2024

By posting the lurk sign, Im subscribing to your thread. I enjoy threads were people do the work themselves. You are saving your self a ton of money.

Mike

bizaro

JackDidley

Looks like mine, last year. I took off the doors and hatch too. I sanded until I was sick of sanding. Sanded of 5 layers of clear, 5 base and 2 primers. Took it down naked. You saved yourself a ton of $$$$ and you can be sure the prep was well done. The results will be worth it.

CorvetteMike2024

Jay. Check out these colors.

House of Kolor

Mike

http://www.houseofkolor.com/speedsha..._urethanes.jsp

ccrazor

PLRX

Subscribed

kenv

Very

Muffin

I hope everyone with a Corvette reads this thread. Then and only then will they understand why a high class paint job costs $6,000 plus.

Nice work Jay. I wish I had seen this before I started mine 7 years ago.

KoRnitup

Thanks for this thread, bookmarked!