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majorrich's avatar

Painting my Car: How much should I sand?

Asked by majorrich (14741points) May 22nd, 2012

Yesterday I fired up my DA and started on my car to begin preparation for painting. To my surprise, the paint seemed to disintegrate and turn to dust and did not clog the paper as I am accustomed to. The previous owner apparently used black primer rather than actual paint perhaps? At any rate, the surface is rough and makes it pretty easy to see where I have sanded. My question is, should I go to metal, the old paint or till it’s smooth. I plan on going from 180 to 240 with the DA, then wet sand with 400 before I shoot paint. Just wondering how deep to go now.

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6 Answers

tranquilsea's avatar

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.

Adirondackwannabe's avatar

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.

jerv's avatar

Bare metal. Take it all off!

dabbler's avatar

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.

wallabies's avatar

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.

majorrich's avatar

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?

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