In the summer of '99 I decided it was time to paint my '76 128 sedan. The blue paint that the previous owner had painted it with was peeling badly. It had a bunch of small dents and had been scraped down the whole right rear quarter panel in a parking lot, so I wanted to fix all the cosmetic blemishes and make it one color (instead of blue outside and silver everywhere else). What was to be a quick strip and respray turned into a much longer project than I had anticipated...
Fortunately I had some very good friends - both fellow Fiat enthusiasts, Ed let me work on my car at his place and store it there all summer, and Lalo assisted me with the bodywork (and generally taught me all about the proper way to paint a car). We pulled the engine, interior, and all exterior trim in a day. The glass, headliner, and wiring harness also came out. Basically, we left enough suspension on the car to move it around.
For three months I spent every weekend working on the car. It was a long process of sanding through the old paint (stripping it where necessary), hammering out the dents and filling them with body filler, welding cracks and rust spots, priming, sanding, priming, sanding, spot-puttying, sanding, oh and did I mention sanding? By the end of the summer we had the interior, engine bay, and trunk painted, and the exterior 95% ready for paint. Then the school season started again and I had run out of money, so the car went into my garage for a year. The summer of 2000 we pulled it out and finished up the last bits before the final spray.
So, it's now January 16, 2002 and the car still isn't painted. It has sat in a friend's paint booth for well over a year now, waiting for him to do the final spray. Due to his busy schedule he hasn't been able to get to it. Another friend has offered use of his garage to paint it in, so I will probably be finishing it up in the next month or two if all goes well. I'll keep you posted and put up new pics when it's finally yellow!
Here are some pics of the process. More will follow once I get them developed.
This page created: January 16, 2002