Hey, what’s up again G body crew? Back with another update! It’s a fairly comprehensive one tonight with plenty ‘o pics, so be forewarned...
Last time I alluded to the fact that I’d go into a bit more detail on the condition of the paint on the center piece that houses the reverse lights and license tag.
I’ve mentioned more than once that the repaint this thing received previously in its life is complete crap, and it’s not because I’m overly critical or want to criticize someone else’s work, I’m just stating a point of fact.
Judge for yourself, here’s a couple close up photos of what I had to work with.
An overall view, a 5 footer at best:
The right hand reverse light opening. Note the obvious overspray and non matching color inside it:
A nasty paint chip right on the visible edge:
This one is particularly bad. Don’t really have to say anything here... WTF??
In this one, note the “melted styrofoam” looking stuff along the top edge. This is a monster run that was full of holes from solvent pop when it dried.
Same here. Solvent pop is caused by using the wrong reducer in your paint for the temperature range in which you’re spraying. In this case, the solvent was too slow and still trying to evaporate as the paint was already curing in high temperature.
Insufficient coverage and poor adhesion:
Anyways, you get the point. It was poorly prepped and sprayed. This is important, because it means it makes my job to properly refinish it all that much harder. If this was the original lacquer paint, I would be able to simply scuff it up with a red Scotchbrite, feather out the deeper scratches, hit it with a coat of sealer before paint, and be on my merry way.
However with all this to contend with, I had to physically sand off most of the layers right down to bare plastic in most places. This was extremely labor intensive and time consuming as it almost all had to be done by hand. I was only able to use the DA sander on the large flat sections.
Here’s what it looked like after I was finally done and gave it a good bath with hot soapy water and a wipe down with wax and grease remover:
Not much white left on there!
With that hassle done and out of the way for now, I turned my attention to the quarter panel extensions. These were a treat to prep in comparison, they were already primed and ready to go. A good scuffing of the inner areas and a blocking of the visible sections finishing in 400 grit dry was all it took.
At almost the last minute, I remembered that I had two more areas that needed to be painted as well, the coves behind where the plastic bumper fillers attach. I really should have painted these areas when I did the tail pan and trunk jambs, but I really wasn’t ready yet. I still had rust removal to do there, and they needed to be epoxied and seam sealed so it got bumped down the line until now.
Like the quarter extensions, a good sanding with 400 dry and a light scuffing with Scotchbrite in the hard to reach areas is all it took.
All prepped up and ready to go:
That’s quite a few pics already so....
Continued >>>
