Prepping for repaint of quarter and decklid

[DinoBob]

My mom's always garaged white 79 CDV has about 60% original paint. The decklid and quarter have been repainted twice; one from a hit when the car was 3 months old, and one later. The first repair/repaint looked great until it started checking, and some surface rust appeared in one spot. It was very straight.

The second painter, if anything, did a far worse job than the first. The prep work was horrible and the paint is awful. Very poor sanding and prep time resulted in a wavy finish with tons of visible sanding scratches, some lifting paint, and checks from the old paint showing up in the new. It's simply horrid and embarrassing.

The panels themselves are straight. I suspect some minimal bondo in the left quarter from the original repair, and I am very reluctant to use stripper as I know it will ruin any filler. I'd like to avoid redoing the filler.

Can I block all of this paint off, to a point where I can prep it properly? Should I? Does anyone have any tips on this?

Thanks.

[bill henry]

dont use a chemical stripper I use a 36 grit disc on my DA to strip.

[Dan LeBlanc]

I agree with Bill.  A 36 grit disc on a DA sander to strip it down to bare metal.  Keep it moving as you don't want to heat warp any panels.  Be careful if you cut through the paint where there's filler.  Once down to bare metal, one good coat of epoxy primer followed by two coats of high-build primer.  Use a guide coat on your high-build primer.  Start block sanding with 220 grit to get everything level, work to 320 then to 500 grit to get out any sanding scratches left behind by the coarser grits.  Finally, wet-sand with 800 or 1000 grit and then your ready for paint after a good cleaning.  90% of any good paint job is in the preparation.  10% of the time is in the paint booth.   You can't hide bad prep work with paint.  If anything, it will only serve to magnify it.

[DinoBob]

You bet. I will be very slow and methodical. I have no intention of ever allowing it to look like this again.