Painting the C10

[yellomalibu]

I am not a painter - just wanted to get that out there.

I have made the decision to put some money into the 84 C10 I bought last year, and get it painted. When I bought it, it had a relatively new paint job of baby blue Ace Rust Stop, oil based paint. Not only is it a color I don't like, it's terribly orange peely, it chips easily, and gets miildewy after a few months without being bleached.

I'm willing to pay a shop around $500 to paint it, which means I have to do a lot of prep myself.

My plan is to sand the junk paint off and do the body work myself, then take it somewhere to get painted. I will have removed bumpers, trim, grill, mirrors, etc.

I started yesterday by hitting it with the 3000 psi pressure washer - I was hoping most of the baby blue paint would come off, but only a little did.

This morning I started going at it with a shiny new electric d/a with 80 grit, trying to remove the light blue paint and leave as much of the old medium blue paint as possible (I do want this truck to look decent when it's done, not extremely wavy). I thought the 80 may be too aggressive, so I got a pack of 120 also - but the 80 is not "too" aggressive; it takes a while to get the top layer of paint off.

I have a couple photos that I'll load up later (maybe tonight).

So, now that I've jumped headfirst into this, maybe it's time to ask for some advice.
-There is some bare metal after sanding. Do I hit it with ospho and then prime it after it dries or wait to prime until it's time to do the blocking?
-Will automotive paint adhere to rattle can primer?
-Is there a brand of rattle can primer that's better than others?
-For the dings and small dents, should I use the body filler from the paint store, or is the Bondo brand fine?

Here's what it looked like when I bought it:

[yellomalibu]

You can see I have switched wheels, and turned the tires around so the white letters (and the overspray) are on the inside.

Not much paint came off with the pressure washer:


After sanding on it for a couple hours:


I tried using a razor blade, but didn't have much luck. I've got some more paint sanded off, but haven't taken any more pics yet.

[rightpedal]

Cem stripper is your friend. Try some on a 2x2 area with a layer of cheap painters plastic over it (keep it from drying out). It should make short work of the rustolium and leave most of the factory paint. Scrape what you can and power wash the rest. It makes the sanding part a lot easier.

Sand with the finest grit that will make a difference.

If the scuff and shoot paint shop lays down a seal coat the rattle can paint shouldn't make any difference.

Go to the paint supply house and get rattle self etching primer from them (SEM or like) It is 12$ to 18$ well spent.

I don't like bondo it is hard to work with in light layers. Any of the catalyzed glazing compounds are sweet for under 1/8th fill.

More when I can think of it

Steve

[anotheridiot]

any kind of metal prep would help bare metal areas, its an iron phosphate in a can. just really dont want to sand that far if you dont have to. You might want to choose your paint shop and ask them for some advice. Most people have a set way to sand a prep a car for paint and regardless how right you are in what you do, they might see it as wrong and just need to do your work over again. You go and pay 500 for the paint job and it chips off you go back to them, you do the prep work yourself and the paint chips off they might blame it right back to you telling them the car was ready to be painted.

Spray paint strippers work real well, make a mess, are around 10 bucks a can and the cost adds up as fast as tearing off DA pads. Its great to want to do the work yourself, but maybe you take that truck to the paint shop and get the guestimate for prepping and painting as is or if you do the work yourself and you might end up with the cost of your supplies added to the cost and puts all the responsibility in their hands.

[yellomalibu]

Thanks for the advice on the spray strippers, I've got about half the truck stripped of the rustoleum, and may give it a try on the other half of the truck.

I got more of the drivers side and most of the hood done yesterday. The hood - the original paint must have been in bad shape, because it appears the rustoleum guy had it stripped down to metal. My razor blade did a great job on the majority of the hood, removing a primer that bonded well to the rustoluem (but not the metal) - pretty much taking it down to metal; metal that still needs to be treated with ospho and then primed with some etching primer.

I need to figure out a better way to get photos from my new smart phone to my computer. I'm emailing them one at a time and it takes forever. I have one of those cases that has a hard plastic shell over rubber that fits tight to the phone, and the memory card is inside all that, inside the back cover of the phone... I'm not taking it off all the time to put the memory card in my card reader. (It's a Samsung Charge, Verizon if anyone has an easy way to get pics from the camera to my computer).

Why I'm doing the prep work myself: It's a challenge. Pretty much every panel on the truck has a dent or ding. On top of being thrifty with the money I'm putting into this truck, I am challenging myself to do the body work and see how well it looks after the shiny paint goes on. If it looks good, I get a feeling of accomplishment. If it doesn't look so good - eh, it's just a truck I don't have much money into.

[DanStokes]

As much as I love Rightpedal I have different opinions based on a TON of paint work over the years.

1) I NEVER use chemical strippers. I've had too many instances where it gets into a nook or cranny and you CAN'T paint over it - remember, it's job is to REMOVE paint. I'd stick with the sandpaper.
2) I've sprayed a lot of "real" paint over Auto Zone/Advance/Etc. self-etching primer (I use Dupli-Color) with high bond and no issues.
3) AZ Bondo is fine as a filler but you'll want a 2 part surfacer (glazing compound - what we used to call "primer putty") to take out scratches and pin holes. Remember to hammer out the dents as fully as possible and use the filler and surfacer for their intended purpose.
4) I've spent the extra $$ for SEM primer/surfacer if I don't want to get the gun dirty. It fills as well as "real" primer and is great to block and/or paint over.

I agree that you need to talk to the paint shop (let's say, MAACO) and ask what they're OK with. The really DO want your job to be successful and durable as it's a good ad for them. I just had MAACO do the two-tone on my Dodge and they did a great job. I showed them the spots I was going to fix and told them the methods I planned to use so there were no surprises and they made a couple of suggestions. I optioned up to the urethane and the extra UV protection and my total was $527 (plus some dents that I had paintlessly removed). A single color all-over job would have been the same price as the materials costs are slightly more but the labor is less.

Dan

[yellomalibu]

Thanks to everyone so far for their input. I bought a quart of the gel stripper last night, and used it on the cowl (on sawhorses) and on the tailgate around the "CHEVROLET" raised letters that would have been a week getting the paint off with sandpaper.

I guess I'll have to make double sure I get all the stripper residue off before moving on to the next step... but for now, I still have a lot of rustoleum removal to go.

... and yes, Maaco was what I had in mind. If the option of urethane and extra UV protection is what you chose, Dan, then I'll definitely keep it in the front of my mind.

[DanStokes]

I haven't tried this myself but one of my buds claims the way to remove every trace of stripper is to repeatedly hit the area with a pressure washer. Makes sense to me.

MAACO is highly franchisee dependent but our local guys seem to want to do well and they do. Best of luck with this!

Dan

[anotheridiot]

I haven't tried this myself but one of my buds claims the way to remove every trace of stripper is to repeatedly hit the area with a pressure washer. Makes sense to me.

MAACO is highly franchisee dependent but our local guys seem to want to do well and they do. Best of luck with this!

Dan

Pressure washers are great, but you also need to remember you just removed every thing protecting that steel and the choice of stripper in the nooks and crannies or water stuck in there and surface rust popping up is kinda tough to decide which is worse. The water is gonna evaporate eventually, that surface rust in the cracks is gonna get a head start on ruining the paint job. Being industrial here, I have a k coat product I have blended that is a one step iron phosphate that protects that metal while the water is drying.

Its great you want to accomplish the body work yourself. Alot of us have been there, I have sanded, sandblasted, cut and replaced and yeah its a pain. If you get to the point you dont think its real straight or smooth, you can just go to a lighter color so more imperfections will be hidden.

[yellomalibu]

Got the hood stripped, got the roof stripped (I cheated and used the stripper), and almost the entire driver's side is stripped. I've even started some of the nooks and crannies.

Removing the mirror was no problem, unscrewing the drip rail was no problem, but I tried to remove the door handle today, and it's not like the Chevelle; it has a rod attached to it, and I am unsure how to remove the rod without breaking something.

Oh yeah - I hit a junk yard last weekend. I got a sway bar and all the brackets - including the brackets that rivet to the frame because this truck has never had a sway bar. Having driven the Blazer with and without a sway bar, I know how much better it is with one. A great investment, especially since I tow with it. I also got a pair of side marker lights, since the ones on the truck are both messed up. Total: $65.

[DanStokes]

You're on your way!

Dan

[Bamfster]

I'm watching this one. My plan with the BWB, since all the paint is falling off, is to do the same as you .... only I may try the Duplicolor Paintshop series myself.

[DanStokes]

I don't know who makes the Duplicolor stuff but MAACO (at least in this area) is Sherwin-Williams - perfectly good paint. I suppose Duplicolor may brew up their own. Probably fine but I just don't know how it holds up over time. Generally paint gets cheaper as a result of less UV protection but again, I don't know if that's true of the Duplicolor stuff.

Dan

[Bamfster]

The duplicolor stuff is ready to spray out of the can and they do have a UV protect-ant clear too. I'll be the first to say that I suck at spraying paint .... even rattle can .... so it'll be more of a learning and sense of accomplishment if I can do it.

[yellomalibu]

I will need to make some calls, but I had an idea to use the rattle cans of Duplicolor to jam the truck, and possibly to go around the windshield with it before having a new windshield put in (because I would hate it if the new rubber didn't overlap the paint job)...

So I need to find out how much the cans of duplicolor cost, how many I may need ... if they would mess up the maaco guys... versus how much Maaco would charge me to jam the truck and paint it without front and rear windows.

This is getting more complicated than I planned for... but I'm still okay with it.

* If this thread should be moved to the projects section, my feelings wouldn't be hurt if that happened *