I am soon to be purchasing a 1990 300zx twin turbo with terrible flaky paint....clearly needing a new paint job. However, i am cheap and don't feel like spending several hundred dollars on professional painting.

So, rather than perform the infamous $50.00 poor man's rustoleum/rattle can paint job, I was pondering stripping it down to bare metal and polishing it.

I have an angle grinder and could buy sanding/polishing disks, then go to my nearest automotive store and buy metal polish, polish it all to death, wax it, or put some form of varnish/clearcoat on....right?

Basically, I want to know if my plan is flawed, if I am leaving anything major out, and whether or not it will look like crap.

Comments? Concerns? Am I an idiot for thinking I can do this?

Thanks,

Daniel

Do you really expect a car with fucked paint to have perfectly formed body panels?

^ Indeed. I would be surprised if even new cars from the factory didn't need panel alignment and shit before having this treatment.

However, i am cheap and don't feel like spending several hundred dollars on professional painting.


haha more like $5000AUD for anything even acceptable. The $50 job will take less effort and look better in the end than polished and then rusty (yes it will happen no matter what you do) panels.

yeah if only professional resprays were several hundred dollars...

There's a cheap paint shop in this little town called King of Prussia over the hills and far away, in Pennsylvania. I don't know if you've heard of it though, or of their quality of work.

Polishing bare metal?

Well you'll have to take all the paint off which usually leaves you with a pretty nasty surface. Then you'll have to spend literally months getting all the tiny dents and marks and pressings out so that when you polish it, it looks straight. Then you'll spend months polishing every panel to a mirror finish, and if you don't keep it in a dehumidified room, you'll end up with surface rust before you're done. Then you'll have to have a clearcoat put on it. Any stone chips will instantly start rusting and you'll probably have to do the whole panel again as repairs on a mirrored finish would be really easy to spot.

Rustoleum, or find someone who's willing to let you hire their spray booth for a couple of days. If you're serious about painting your car, buy some books off of amazon, read up on it, and go to your local college and see if they do car body repair/restoration evening classes. You might even be able to spray your own car in practical lessons.

Are you going to electroplate the steel?

Chances are a car with flaky paint will have bondo underneath it.

Is that what this guy did?
http://www.kplinks.com/media/pleasanton1.JPEG

Is that what this guy did?
http://www.kplinks.com/media/pleasanton1.JPEG

This car uses bare metal as well.
http://redlightnaps.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/delorean1.jpg
Although it is stainless steel.

Is that what this guy did?
http://www.kplinks.com/media/pleasanton1.JPEG
Yeah. I guarantee he buffed surface rust of it before that show. I'm also willing to bet that he is a qualified panelbeater/sheetmetal worker with years of experience. I've seen a few hot rods done the same, but damn, it's an extremely hard thing to pull off man.

Go for it if you really are determined enough to do it, and fully understand that there is a hell of a lot more to it than tearing off the paint and polishing. Stuff like that is a fucking cunt of a job, that's why damn near nobody does it.

I don't think you really get what kind of work this is.

Doing something like that is a full time job.

Just borrow a paint booth, take your headlights and taillights out, tape/paper the windows, and get to it!!

It's not hard, find a friend that knows how to paint.

It'll come out pretty decent. My completely unprofessional friend painted his chevy lumina in a day, and it was pretty god damn nice for a one day respray with barely any prep.

it can be done but......
you would have to put allot more work into it, than it would take to fix it, but thats another forum, culture, and nomenclature.

It will rust straight away unless you put a clear coat on immediately after and you're going to need spraying equipment to do that. Not to mention it will look shit.