I am prepping my car for a new paint job, and trying to remove the front and rear facias. I can not seem to figure out how I am going to get the top rear facia screws out. Anyone that can provide me with tips, or even pics would be super. Also, any body prepping tips before painting my car would also be much appreciated. Thanks in advance all.

 

I would remove all 4 tail lights. That should help with accessing some of the nuts. They have to come out anyway. You might also remove the spare tire carrier; once that area opens up, you can see most of the nuts.

The corners and vertical sides can be a tight squeeze with the mufflers in place. It's not too hard to remove the rear Y-pipe and the mufflers as a single piece.

 

I can't seem to figure out how the tail lights come out either. The factory manual does not go into every much detail.

 

The factory tail light have torx screws on each side of the lens. After them are removed the bulb housing will just pull out. The rear cover bolts are all along the top and down the sides. They are 10mm bolts and about 15-20 of them total.


Are they a reason you are removing the front and rear bumper covers for paint? If your just having it repainted their is no real need to remove them. Just removed the tail lights,tag plate and side marker lights.

Their will be less benefit to removing them to paint then leaving them on. If your painting a metallic color you will run a higher risk of them not matching correctly, damage to fresh paint from the re-install, and possible bad alignment.
Removing the front and rear covers is not like removing a normal cars hood or fender. The urethane bumpers can be a royal pain to get off and back on correctly.

Unless you plan to have them striped,they are already mis-aligned, or have flaking paint in the seems I would just leave them on the car.

 

 

Thank you very much. It sounds like I should just leave them on the car then. Yes, the car is currently black, but I am repainting it metallic bronze. I will just have to remove all light fixtures and lenzes. Thanks again!

 

Would suggest that you try posting on the "paint and body section" of the forum. If you are going to a different color you are going to want to be able to take both front & rear bumpers off, the top, the hood and the doors (if possible) so that you can do the door jams.

 

I will state I am not a paint or body shop expert, but I will disagree on leaving the bumpers on.

I bought a 84 that was repainted. At the seams between the rear bumper and rear body work, the paint was chipping and peeling off. I believe this happened because of the seam there. The seam was painted over and with the different expansion / contraction rates and just slight movements between the two body panels caused this.

So when I repainted it, I removed the front and rear bumper, gills, rockers, headlight covers, black mouldings and targa top and painted them at the same time, but seperatly.

I am not sure about the metallic color matching issue, I painted my car a stock(ish) red.

Again I am no expert, but with the paint peeling off the seams, I chose to do it that way.

 

If the sprayer is good, Matching panels off the car can be done quite easy as long as everything is done the same. X thickness of primer, X amount of color, X amount of clear coat etc. Most any experienced painter will have no issues with color match. But it does run a higher risk or panel mis match.


Doors don't need to be removed to spray the jambs a different color. Specially on a C4. With the hood up you can spray the exterior and interior doors and the jambs with everything free and clear. You need to remove the side fenders first so their is no issues at the bottom of the exterior door.

No reason to remove a hood that has a black underside. You can get to every angle of the hood very easy.

In my first statement it says their is no reason to remove the bumper covers unless the paint is chipping at the seems. If paint is chipping at the seems it would be best to remove the bumper cover to remove the chipping paint. If the paint is not chipping spraying another coating over it will NOT cause it to crack. All modern automotive paint is ment to flex on urethane bumpers. After a paint has cured it does not expand or contract at all. If it did then it would expand once and all would flake off when it contracted.
New paint will shrink as it cures, But after it is cured its done.

Paint that is chipping or cracked is caused by too much hardener or a poor prepared surface.


You can remove every single body panel except the rear quarters if it makes you feel better, But unless their is a reason it is IMO wasted time. Of corse the more you strip the better chance you have of higher quality. But their is a limt of where the work it greater then the result. Here is a picture of my door jambs right after they where painted. The picture was ment to be for the 96 door panels on the 91 so you can see the jambs real well but you get the idea. I went from dark gray metallic to bright red.

 

They are not hard to get out. Pull the tag like the above post. Take a rachet wrench, 10 minutes. Same for 7mm screws above facia, small rachet wrech.

 

Just a little clarification.

 

Rear tail light bulb removal--- GM must have thought that the original bulbs were going to last forever

 

Yeah that's my bad I was not thinking about the pre 91 models. As soon as I seen the picture posted I realized it was completely different then the 91-96 style. I did not know that the tail light had to be removed from the back on the 84-90. That's just ****ty.

I tried and tried to get to the rear bumper bolts through the tag and brake light holes with no luck. I ended up removing the spare tire exhaust and lifted the car up high enough so I could set under it to remove the bolts.