Greg,
The degree of your restoration will determine how far you need to go. If
you intend to do local repairs, a good, harsh dishwashing detergent should
suffice. De-wax as much of the car as you are going to repaint. (If you
are doing body work, you'll need to take it down to bare metal.) You'll be
doing a lot of sanding and, ultimately, wet sanding. You'll go back over
with metal prep cleaner later.
If you are doing a topical repair, will you be blending? Or will you be
respraying the entire car? Actually, if I recall, your car has a single
stage paint so blending isn't really an option. (Blending single-stage is
next to impossible.) That said, at a minimum you will be wet sanding the
entire car. (Unless you are just going to respray a particular panel--like
your decklid. If that's the case, just know that you won't get a perfect
match.)
If you are going to take the car all the way down, you'll want to chemically
strip it. You want to know--exactly--the degree of previous bodywork done.
Then you can decide how much you will want to--or need to--redo.
Know ahead of time what you want to do. Keep the scope of the project
finite. Good luck.
JR
----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Lemon" <glemon@neb.rr.com>
To: "Healey" <healeys@Autox.Team.Net>
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 10:46 AM
Subject: Cleaning surface before re-paint
> As I have mentioned a couple of times before I am starting to do the
> bodywork on my Healey. I may be sanding some or all of the old paint (and
> filler) down before starting on refinishing work. I have heard it is a
> good
> idea to remove all traces of wax before doing this. I have some "pure
> denatured alcohol" is this adequate for stripping wax, grease etc. ?, or
> should I go to the auto body store and buy the specialty stuff made for
> this
> purpose? I will of course clean it off again before any paint is applied
> at
> which time I am sure I will use the "specialty stuff".
>
> Thanks,
>
> Greg Lemon
> 54 BN1
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