I am having the same dilemma going forward. I have expoyed the rear fenders, a bedside and the bed steps after they were blasted. I am sure not looking forward to having to sand those parts or even scuff them up with a scotch brite, at least not in the nooks and crannies. Does everything need to be sanded, the undersides & insides of fender lips, etc?
For the rest of the sheet metal & cab, I thought I would use a DA or some of the other discs to strip the paint and only blast the hard to access spots. However, those same hard to reach spots would then need to be painted with epoxy and scuffed/sanded down the road before an epoxy re-coat and top coat Not attractive.
I am wondering if self etch primer has the time window and sanding requirements as epoxy, but haven’t looked into it yet. I might consider trying to replace all the patch panels and do any filler work and save blasting the nooks and crannies until just before it is ready to topcoat. A problem with that would be uncovering something that takes a while to fix. I guess I could let it surface rust while fixing it and then re-blast. I’m sort of thinking out-loud. Finally something like Ospho or Picklex could be sprayed on the blasted metal to delay rust, but I’m not sure if those will last long enough.
What has everyone else done or suggest? I really don’t see myself writing checks, so it’s going to be a do it myself thing.
