sanding the old...to the metal?

[bcjammerx]

When you are going to do your own paint job...and you sand off all the old stuff...is it best to sand all the way to the metal? Or just rough it up?

when you sand all the way to the metal...I've seen some pics of this...and the one's I've seen have heavy swirls marks on the metal...looks like some really hard disk was used. Wouldn't these deep swirls show up? I mean wouldn't that also mean you'd need more paint to cover that?

I thought about polishing the metal smooth before painting...but wasn't sure if that would be good for getting the paint to stick

would it be good to at least smooth the metal surface out a bit and not have such noticable swirls from the sanding/grinding process?

[Autotek]

You should never sand to metal unless you absolutely have to. Like rust , paint cracking or peeling. If you have to you should make your final grit 180. Your standard two part high build primer should fill 180 grit fine. But before you prime you must use a self etch primer to direct metal , this ensures proper bonding. your supposed to wait at least 30 min in between coats. Also if you strip any areas to metal its important not to leave it bare for more than 24 hours. Humidity contaminates metal pretty fast. This can cause a problem in the whole process.

[Accrdwgnguy]

Unless your paint is REALLY bad

Unless your paint is really bad you shouldn't sand to bare metal. I took my 83 Malibu Wagon down to bare metal cuz the lacquer paint had weathered pretty bad and surface rust had formed under the paint. Like autotek said, if there are no issues with the base metal(dents, rust) then there is no reason to take it down to bare metal. Just level and feather out all the old paint with 320 or 400 on a DA sander. If you wanna see some pics of this, http://community.webshots.com/album/...kQzBf?start=60

[bcjammerx]

FROM FOLKS WHO KNOW!!!

Thanks! I'll bookmark the pics!