Painting my Car: How much should I sand?

If this was me, and I’m little OCD about things, I’d go as close to the metal as possible. I wouldn’t want to run the risk of old paint coming up after the new paint has been laid down.

It’s a pain in the ass, but if you plan on keeping the car for anytime it’s well worth it to get rid of all that old paint. I didn’t sand enough on one repair job I did and I hated it everyday I had the car.

Bare metal. Take it all off!

If we’re talkin’ original paint, I’d leave the primer on. It’s hard to do a better job of priming than original.
But since the previous owner has painted over…?... get all that off of there before you invest your time and effort putting a good new paint job on.

Factory primer and paint are awesome. I would sand down to that and go from there. If you take it down to metal, you have to surface prep the metal before priming.

I was especially worried about the aluminum hood. Taking it to the factory primer sounds good there. Where i break through on the aluminum, can I get by with small patches of regular primer instead of the expensive stuff?