Stripping the paint off the car will be a lot of work. It ALL has to come off. It is all original paint, and very thin in areas which resulted in surface rust in a few spots, not to mention that every scratch or ding the car received is now a rust pit. All evidence of rust MUST be removed and/or neutralized before being coated with primer or it will come back to ruin the paint job later. Paint stripper doesn’t work too well on this original acrylic lacquer paint. It tends to just make it wet again, without the typical curdling you see when stripping old furniture. Stripping with media blasting or a D.A. (dual action sander) is pretty much the only way to go. Since we can’t afford to have this entire body media blasted, I opted for the D.A. When I get a chance I will roll the car outside and use a portable media blaster to do the tight areas, door jambs, etc since they can’t really be reached with the D.A. and this car is so crusty that doing it any other way just wouldn’t be correct or even practical. This whole project has become quite a big job… the more dismantling that is done, the more crusty rusty nastiness we find!
Just for kicks I installed one of the rear valence panels that I bought through eBay. These suckers are hard to get in good shape, and you gotta pay $$$! Why haven’t these things been reproduced?