You wanna see what happens to nice, pretty, shiny black paint when you sand the living daylights out of it?...






Muuuhahahahahahahahaha!

I've only just begun to defile this baby!

Ha hahahahahahahahahahaha!

 

hah.. i have been sanding down my car the past two days and its actually looking better... says a lot about my car... but not anything good

what grit are you using? im using a 100 then im going up to a 230 or 220, i cant remember

and how do i get my mirrors off(is it that screw on the bottom?) if you dont know off the top of your head dont worry about it...


good luck and dont sand too far through the paint like i have...

 

100? are you sanding all the way through to the metal?

 

no just the top paint surface and scratches... i have about 3 spots where i did go to the metal and all around the front of the windshield where im gonna put this crazy expensive primmer that is used for making new metal buildings resist rust almost completely... or at least thats what im hopeing for...

im gonna go over it all with i think a 500 but i gotta go find some(i couldnt find any at harbor freight)

 

you know a self etching primer works pretty well

 

whats that... it might be the stuff i was talking about... my brother gave me about 3/4s of a quart and the stuff goes for like $20 or so a quart so it should be good...

 

are you ****ing insane? (sorry rod for the thread jack) you wetsand clear coat wtih 1000 or 1500 and then rubbing coumpound followed by different cuts of buffing and then swirl removers and wax. 100 grit? wow jump off a bridge. thats dumb if your serious.

also rod, why? are you trying to take it all down? cause yeah your starting to get through the paint even.

 

you dont understand how shitty the paint is on my car, its got deep, DEEP scratches but most dont go to the metal... 100 gritt is looking fine but i am going over it with a 220 them 500 later!!!!

and leave rod alone he was just trying to make a thread!!! about what?.... i dont know

 

Yeah, 100 is pretty aggressive for paint, even if your scratches are deep. You don't want to remove the scratch with one wipe of the sand paper that does nearly the same amount of damage.

If you look at what Eastwood sells under the auto "paint / prep" section for sandpaper, you'll notice they don't sell anything lower than 400 grit.

http://www.eastwoodco.com/shopping/p...roductID=11004

 

I'm not taking it all down, but that one fender is/was the worst part of the whole car. It had TOO MUCH paint on it and it kept webbing from flexation, and it had a few gnarly and insanely deep scratches on it that had been filled with touch up paint.. I took a few layers off and am actually going to put one thin layer back on (to blend) once I get the surface uniform.

What you see in the pic is after using 600 grit to get it smoothed out yet rough enough for a thin layer to adhere to.

I always start with 600, then gradually work up to 1200. Anything higher than 1200 grit is wasting time and elbow grease. After the 1200, you break out the compounds, polishes and MACHINERY and make that beyotch shine!

 

pshhh we use 24 grit to get to bare metal on some crap for body work. but really 80 grit all the to the e-coat for body work. gotta love wetsanding. iv done so much tips of my fingers went raw. blocking with 1500 and 2000 grit does alot plus its not as bad as you think. most compound gets and rubbing compound is used after 1500 and 2000.

 

i forget to mention that im sure the car has had a previous extra coat of paint but it might have even had 2....
and im using a randon orbital sander which is making it a little more even

im actually using a 60 grit on the pannel below the door cause i had to use a lot of bondo....

 

^^^^^^ doesnt know body work im starting to think. 60 grit? orbital sander? ugh....

 

w00t! The perma-garaged Z's are finally getting work around here.

 

not all of them

 

I decided yesterday while I was working on it that I only wanted to do some of this stuff once... So I made the bold decision to just start tearing into formerly forbidden areas of need. The Windshield was the first victim (Split like an egg dropped from a rooftop). The trim is all off. All of the little rust spots around the windshield are GONE/No Mas/Done-zo.

The hood is off, the front fenders are off, both bumpers are off, front air dam is off, rear hatch is off, hatch area interior is out, tail lights are out, t-top seals are off (Going to address rust around trim), seats are out, steering wheel is off and dash is coming out next.

My plan is to gut the interior to the point to where it can first of all, be well cleaned (28 years of who knows what), and then painted black to match the exterior. Too many original gold areas show through in spots and I hate it

I'll probably re-wire a bunch of stuff to be more efficient and to get rid of the shoddy and crusty original wiring.

Paint the engine bay.

Repair dented/smashed in rear section and possible mold in a different type of tail lights (undecided).

Put it all back together, polish it til it's blindingly shiny.


Wrap the whole car in bubble wrap and store it in a climate controlled titanium bunker under ground and behind a 6 foot thick wall of concrete.

Or maybe, I'll just skip the bubble wrap stuff and go drive it until some un-insured bonehead makes me regret it... again.

Either way, she's off the road for a while.

 

rod... what do you have to do to get the windshield out? i really need to get to that bastard area infront of the windshield that keeps bubbling with rust....

do i need a new gasket? i dont have an original one because the cheap *** original owner put some silicone or RTV instead of buying a seal and i have couple leaks...

 

Well, first of all... There is no gasket. The windshields are ALL glued in with a special type of urethane.

If you want to remove it yourself, I seriously DO NOT advise trying, but you'll need to remove the chrome trim first. 99% chance you break the tabs holding them to the car. Then you'll need to CUT the windshield out of the car. There are specialized tools for doing so and if you don't have them... I all but assure you that you will FUBAR something.

There's also a 1% chance that you will successfully remove the glass without breaking it. 99% chance it WILL break during removal.

The best thing to do, is have a windshield replacement company (Like... Safelite) remove it and come back with a replacement when you are ready to re-install.

 

come back with a junkyard windshield???

is yalls gasket kind of ugly? like the jap guy putting it in didnt give a dam... well my windshield might have been replaced by an american guy who didnt give a dam...

so removing the windshield is the only way to get good access to the vent in front of the windshield?... well crap!!! i guess i just have to drive this car till it rusts away....

 

Windshields? Where we're going, we don't need windshields!

 

There is a loose correlation to the quality of the installation and the cost of the installation although there are clearly exceptions to this rule... (ie. Safelite) that cost a lot and still do a crummy job...

The best thing you can do is become good friends with someone who just happens to also have a body shop. They usually have the tools to remove the glass safely and the skill to do it without screwing something up.

Otherwise, if you still want to do it yourself, after you remove the trim, you need a "wire knife" to run around the entire perimeter of the glass to separate it from the urethane adhesive. Then, if everything goes well and you have an extra set of hands, you can gently push it out of the window opening. You really need two people to do this unless you've got mad skills. Someone to push from the inside and someone on the outside to "guide/catch" it as it comes free of the frame.

In the end, you're probably still going to need a new windshield...

Then it's important to find someone that's going to do a good job unless you want sticky gooey gobs of urethane adhesive all over your interior.

I paid a guy $155 to replace the windshield in my 24hrs of Lemons car and I would never let him touch one of my "real" cars. It was a total crap job done by one of the cousins of the same family that rear-ended Rod's ZX...

 

Hey Rod....sounds like to me. You are going to go all out and restore it completely. Which is what I want to do with my '82 T-top. I hope it works out for the both of us. And post your progress as you go. As I will as I go. Good luck bro'