1ARACE

...leave doors on or take off?
...mask off or remove door handles/locks?
...mask off trim on t-tops or remove?
...do anything special with rear vent and/or wiper vent?

Little uncertain which way to tackle this...about to strip car and prep for paint. Any tips/advice would be appreciated.
Thanks much

crazywelder

Your budget and condition of the body will define your paint plan. If you are considering masking parts, then it sounds like you are looking for an economical respray that will make the car presentable. But! You are going to all of the effort to strip the paint, why not do some dissasembly and do a better job. Dissasembly will mean buying some replacement parts for those items that are worn out, damaged, or can't be reinstalled such as weatherstrips. Any trim that you leave on an old car will likely hide problems or you risk damaging it while sanding or painting. Five steps; disassemble, strip the body, repair body, paint it, and reassemble. I would expose the inner and outer windshield frame and upper and lower cowl areas first, since these are prone to rust out, and will determine how much work will be ahead of you. I assume you have checked the frame and other exposed areas already.

Easy Mike

Left them on.

removed

Can't help; girl #1 is a convertible; girl #2 has glass tops which I removed.

Removed both; prepped for paint, and painted off the car.

There are a couple of good reference books for prepping and painting a Corvette. Get a couple and read how other folks have done it.

1ARACE

Thanks for replies thus far. The body is off frame atm. I'm just leary about removing doors, fear that I won't be able to get them aligned how they are now (they never been removed). Don't have my books around atm, but are the doors rivoted on? or bolts?
Do you need this special tool http://www.sjdiscounttools.com/kd2038.html to remove the trim off t-tops? Or what do you use?

Niart01

When I painted my 73, I removed all of the trim and both doors. The doors are not hard at all. Remove the interior trim panel. Spray the hinges in the doors with a light coat of paint. I left the hinges bolted to the car and removed the 8 bolts that hold the hinges to the door. Have some help as they are heavy and you don't want to bend anything. The doors slide straight back off the hinges. I was able to paint all of the jams and get the underside of the doors. I put the doors back on before spraying the body. The paint out line allowed me to put the doors back right where I took them off. Very little alignment was needed. I did replace the hinge pins and weather stripping while the doors were off. Could not do it with them on. All trim except the windshield trim was removed. Door handles too as that was a good time to clean and lube. Was a lot easier with the doors on some sawhorses, than on the car. T-top trim was removed. Be aware that there is a rivet holding some of the trim. Drill them out and replace them
with small screws after I painted the T-Tops. Good time to replace all of the weather stripping as well.

Scottys78

Easy Mike

Leave the doors on. They were on the car when it was painted at St. Louis.

You do not need the tool. Order the '69 assembly instruction manual (AIM) and it will have a picture of how the t-top trim was installed at the factory. Don't quote me on this but if memory serves, there are some trim screws you'll have to remove and a rivet to drill out.

Muddywaters

I disasembled complete'ly... and glad I did! Lots of work..but, the results are worth it Muddy

spedaleden

with Muddy Waters. If your going through all that work, spend a liitle more time so the car looks better than new. The end result will be worth the effort.

gator79

some things GM did back then I do not want repeated. like the welding for instance. I took mine completely apart

Corz

doors on, but slightly open so I could get the WHOLE door

locks/handles out

tops off

vents out

CF6873

A trick to getting the doors realigned is to remove the pin from the bottom hinge and remove the bolts from door half of the upper hinge. This way you will already have the correct height of the door and will only have to lift or lower the back of the door. The painting of the bolt heads before removing the upper bolts helps alot also. Removing the doors is the only way to get a good job on the front jambs. I did reinstall the doors prior to painting the car.

TheMongoose

The more I removed the more detailed everything got and the time to do the car just seemed to escalate. I will say a number of these things made it easier to prep and paint though. especially the door handles. It would be a pain to paint around them. Same goes for the chrome window edge. make sure there's no rubber seal sticking out around any of the locks, handles, etc because you will get paint n them and when they move it will eel off the car.