How To Sand Your Car Before Repainting It

Repainting your car is easier than you might think. With a professional-grade paint gun, which you can rent, you can apply a professional-looking new paint job. The guns have become more advanced and easier to use. One part of the job that is still difficult and time consuming is the preparation. In reality, preparing your car surface to be painted, using various sanding and buffing techniques, might take longer than actually painting the car. Furthermore, if you don't do all the necessary prep work, your paint job won't be as smooth or long-lasting.

Prep the Surface

You will need a few different tools to properly prep the surface. Auto body sandpaper comes in various grits. It is much like wood sandpaper, except it is much smoother in order to prevent scratching the metal. This means that you need to apply a lot of pressure to remove the paint without scratching the car surface.  Luckily, you can find auto sandpaper attachments for vibrating and rotating disc sanders. Sanding will take a while because you need to get all of the old paint off of the car. You will need to change the sandpaper a few times throughout the project. Wear a ventilation mask so you don't breathe in too much harmful debris or paint chips.

Filling the Holes

Once the first pass of sanding is done, you need to fill all the holes and dings in the car surface. You will probably go through a lot of auto body filler during this process. The best technique for filling holes is to put it on thick to make sure you get complete coverage. Then, once it is dry, you can sand it down to make it perfectly flat. Don't try to mold the filler perfectly with the putty knife. Sanding it down once it is dry is the best way to make your patch blend in perfectly.

After the final touch ups, fill all the holes and make sure the smoothness of the metal is consistent. This is important because it will also result in a more consistent paint finish. Once everything is prepped, you can move on to the next step. Painting is another big job that can be technical and time-consuming. It might be better to let professionals handle the work if you can't rent a professional-grade gun and don't want to risk it with your car. Talk with someone like Jim Stephen's Foreign Car Repair for more information.

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