The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Sandblast/Dip/Leave it alone?

Hey guys,

Well I'm finally getting around to starting the body work on my '55 3200 and I'm debating how to do it. I found a decent cab to replace the extremely rusty one I had before, but even the new cab will need a couple of repairs and patch panels in a few spots. My initial thought is to have the cab blasted, do the metal repairs, add filler/replace filler, and then prime it. However I'm not looking to make a show-winner truck, just one that looks good (planning on painting it Blitz Black) and I can get on the road to enjoy driving around. Is it worth blasting all of the paint and rust off, or should I just leave it alone, clean the spots that need repair, and go from there? I'm also trying to do as much of the work I can to learn from experience, as well as trying to keep costs down while doing things right (still recovering from college with student loans). I'm new to the body work area and would appreciate any suggestions you may have. Thanks!

It kinda depends on how much paint is on the truck now & what kinda shape it is in. If there are many layers of paint & you sand some areas for repair, your surface will be wavy when painted. If you have, say some good doors, that need the corners welded up but only have one coat of OE paint in fairly good cond, you might not have to strip the entire door. Just epoxy prime. On one hand, if it has stayed on for 40-50 yrs its gonna stay on, on the other hand, you may not want to paint over old paint. My .02, Brian

Unless you have surface rust everywhere there is really no need to take it down to bare metal. Sand smooth, re-prime and paint. I would do the metal repairs before any of that though.

I sandblasted,wire brushed and sanded. Use any combination that you feel is correct for your usage. I did them all and am happy with the results. I finally painted my 4t6 last week and am happy with the results.........But I can't get my digital camera to cooperate with me for pics. The color doesn't seem the same.....But after 3-4 years I AM happy.

Dan
http://rides.webshots.com/album/512683224ScMvjW

M -

There are six tech tips dealing with rust removal in the Tech Tips section, near the bottom of the page. Not sure if any of that will help.

Peg

Neil-
Just going to throw in my $.02 worth in here also-

The '67 C-10 my daughter and I restored was in fairly good shape when we started, therefore I did not make a trip to the sandblaster.

As the project moved along, I really wished I had.
GM didn't waste a lot of money painting their trucks. This was really troublesome under the dash and in the cab.

Long story short - we ended up taking the truck completely apart anyway. It would not have been very expensive or time consuming to take the parts to the sandblaster and have everything cleaned up down to bare metal. Once that was done I could have shot primer on at home to keep anything from starting to rust again.

If you will notice on most of the TV shows, they almost always head for the blaster as soon as they get the vehicle disassembled. I know most of us don't have a TV show budget to work with, but
like I said, sandblasting really isn't that expensive. These old trucks are really pretty simple to work on, but you can run in to a ton of aggravation dealing with 40-50 years of accumulated rust and crud.

To me - having a nice clean primered vehicle to start off with is much better than fighting several decades of Mother Nature.

Don't know if this will help you decide anything or not - just wanted to share some personal experience.

Good Luck!

Personally, I would sandblast it... just to get the rust off. Even if you're not going for a "show truck", you'll still appreciate it while you're driving down the road. And besides, you can get that cab sandblasted for a couple of hundred dollars..