Repainting the 914: Down to metal, always?, Curious to get your thoughts Options

[horizontally-opposed]

So I'm curious to see what the collected wisdom and experience here says -- and I'd like to hear from those who are NOT/have NOT stripped the car of every part for a "rotisserie" style restoration.

This is for those of us with running, driving 914s considering a paint job yet less than enthusiastic about disassembling the whole car.

I'd especially like to hear from Dr. 914 and others who have restored multiple 914s over time and seen how the paint jobs held up. Is a rust bubble the kiss of death for all surrounding metal?

Thanks, (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

pete

[BigD9146gt]

This is a tough one, I think it ultimately depends on the car, who's doing the work, and the quality of the materials being used. I took all of the auto body/paint classes that the local JC had to offer and they were ICAR backed classes. I was able to keep my chassis at the school and strip it down via DA to bare metal, epoxy primer each panel as soon as I reached metal to prevent any oxidation, installed flares, smoothed it all out, and final paint in the schools booth.

First of all, lets talk about the factory paint. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they dipped the cars in primer, so it "should have" covered every surface and crack. Obviously over time this barrier has subsided to the elements. In most cases, its due to rocks chipping the paint, battery acid, and normal chassis flex during use which creats openings at the seams. You only need to go to metal where oxidation has taken place or massive amounts of bondo was favored above spending more time/money "fixing" the dent correctly.

Some of these chassis have MANY paint jobs. My chassis started life signal orange, forget the second color (black maybe?), then back to signal orange, and then again, then I think a red, and finally maroon metallic. Depending on the quality of the respray, I wouldn't want more than 3 paint jobs on a car. At that point I'd at least take it down to the previous paint job and lay down the new coat.

Now assuming for the moment we're going to keep a few layers of the factory paint and only focus on the oxidation and any thick filled areas. Take those to bare metal and bondo or epoxy primer, then spray your sanding primers and smooth out the panels. Sounds easy right? Here in lies a surrounding problem. The old paint will actually soak up the solvents from the new primers and paints. This causes the new paint to shrink and/or crack which can ruin the final paint job if the chassis is rushed from start to finish. To prevent this from happening, light initial coats along with waiting longer between coats to give the solvents more time to be absorbed by the old, and then evaporate from both.

For future projects I am more inclined to leave a few factory layers because I simply don't see the purpose of spending the extra money in sanding materials.

All that being said, if the chassis was special enough like the original 6's or even race history (I know they're all worth saving, but some more than others), I would consider acid dipping. Wurth, along with others like 3M make phenomenal tunnel sealer spraying tools. They work by sticking a small, long flexible tube as far up in the tunnel from an access hole. Then you pull the trigger and pull the tube out slowly while spraying a 360deg fan coating of a wax/primer. Being unable to coat those parts is the only thing that would keep me from an acid dip.

Well, thats all i know at the moment. Cheers, Don.