How To Prep Your Muscle Car For Paint Perfect Work

Posted by David C. Atkin in Saturday, February 17th 2007

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Prepping a car for paint, in my opinion is the most important part of the entire paint job on the car, prepping a car for paint requires a lot of steps in the process to get it right, and right is what your looking for, right includes but is not limited to, having no scratches show through the paint on the car, having no waves or ripples in the paint, having no peeling paint, bubbles or general ugliness showing through the painted surface on the car, and this does require a smooth touch, and a light hand.

The prepping of the car will start after the primer as been sprayed and has time for drying, this is the stage where you get the car ready for paint, and this is most defiantly not as easy as it sounds, the prepper is the one who makes the painter look good in the end, so the painter will be making sure that your doing it the right way, he will go over every inch of your prep work and point out every place where it needs work.

Now that the primer is dry it’s time for the prepping of the car for paint, depending on the painter, some of what I say may change a bit, this is not written in stone, you now have the freshly primed car sitting in font of you, and hopefully it’s unmasked so you can begin, but if not that will be up to you also, OK let’s begin, you want to make sure that you have the tools that you need to to the job, these are very simple tools, you need sanding blocks ranging in size from 6” to as long as you can find, usually 12 – 14” these are the tools that you’ll be using to do the job.

Now make sure that you have wet sand paper, ranging from 220 – 600 grit, the first thing that you’ll do is wet down the car and make sure that it’s clean before you start on it, this will insure that nothing gets caught under that sand paper and gouges the primer on the car, a lot of people have different ways of doing this part, and some people will tell you that dry sanding is just as good “Not True” wet sanding creates a smoother finer surface to lay the paint on.

Now load the 220 grit sand paper on the long block, that is hopefully a flexible one, make sure that the area that your sanding is wet again, and keep it that way with a hose, now begin sanding the car with a light “X” pattern try to get as close to a 45 degree cross hatch as you can, with the 220 Grit your just looking to take any roughness of the the primer that you can, your looking for a general smoothness here over the entire car, but be careful not to go through the primer, it will require more primer and prep work if you do.

After you’ve sanded the entire car, and not gone through the primer, you can now load the with the 320 or 400 grit sand paper which ever you bought, sands this time your looking for a different out come on the sanding, what your looking for is a smooth dull shine over the entire car, the short blocks are to help you get in to the areas that you can’t get with the long block, you want to use the long one as much as possible, as will will help lighten the washboard effect in the car’s paint.

Now we move on to the 600 grit, and this is your choice also, you can stop with the 400 grit paper, I think that it provides a bit better out come to finish to 600 grit though, so what your looking for here is almost a mirror finish on the primer, well a dull mirror, but the idea behind finishing to 600 grit paper is to get every last flaw that you possibly can out of the car, and this extra step will help with that process, now that you have a dull shine on the entire car, break out your water hose, clean out a bucket, and put water and car washing soap in it, and wash the car to clean off all of the wet sanding residue, now blow the car off with your air hose to get the last of the water off, and let it dray the rest of the way off, after it’s dry go ahead and clean the car with some prep cleaner, you can get this at your local auto body supply house, after you prep clean the car your all done, WOO HOO.

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