hi,

i want to get a car resprayed. I hear it's heaps cheaper if you do a lot of the preperation like sanding etc. first so this is what im planning to do because it's just a project/hobby car. Being a noob i don't know where to start and have a few questions for the avid automobile enthusiasts that lurk these parts.

- Is it a matter of just going hell for leather with a sander?
- can you use paint thinner or something first?
- can i be lazy and use an electric sander?
- I imagine you dont really want to get down to the bare metal, is this the case?

any other tips would be great.

cheers.

Also don't use 60 grit sand paper. Trust me on this.

Not recommended that you do this yourself
going hell for leather will actually make it more expensive because they'll have to spend extra time prepping areas you dug out too far.
you only use paint stripper if you're going for a full bare metal respray - this will cost you 5k+ to get done properly, once again not recommended unless you're doing a ground up rebuild of the whole car and or it is a show car

all they do when respraying a car is get it down to one even layer of paint, ie remove all the clear coat
even if you're changing the color - then they just use that as a base coat and keep applying the new paint until they have their final coat before wet sanding / clear coat etc

pro tip, leave it to a pro because it will end up costing less than fixing your mangled mess

i've only been involved with two types of respray

the fine wet & dry for hours each day by hand, that took a year to prep and was butter smooth

the other was cheap crazy clarks fridge white to gloss over some gravel damage from a rally stage

but others have covered it pretty well, while it might be project car, striping to bare metal does require the time to be done right, something that can also be stuffed up by not wanting to take the time, and by taking shortcuts,

while it might be cheaper to prep it yourself, the time it takes, and the easy to make the whole job more expensive but f*****g the lot up. so long run unless you have done this before, or have access to people that can teach you get the pros to do it

you can get closed door resprays for under $1k

Okay so you're getting it painted metallic black. If you're sanding it by hand, you'l want to use p800 wet/dry. IF you hav ean orbital sander you're get away with doing it with p400 on an interface pad.

A good bit of masking tape around the edges also does wonders.