Osteoclast

Hi everybody, I've been a lurker on here forever as my dad has a 2006 corvette but I've never made an account. I figured now was the time to make an account as I just got my first corvette. I bought it a couple of weeks ago for fairly cheap. Its a 1981, stock colors were two tone silver on top with charcoal on bottom. Needless to say, as you will see, the car needs lots of work, mainly the paint.

The guy I bought the car from said he picked up the car about 8 years ago and it had already been painted "a couple of times". The color had been changed to charcoal over the entire body before he had even got the car....he also had it CHEAPLY painted immediately after he got it. Apparently, the job he had done was so bad the paint lasted about a year. After driving it for a couple with peeling paint he attempted to take most of the paint off and I guess just got too busy/burned out to deal with it. Here's where I come in. I bought the car with most of the paint stripped off the front end. he said he used chemical stripper to take it off and started using a DA sander in most spots to take off the underlying primer.

As of now I'm looking to get this thing ready to paint myself. I don't have a massive amount of time daily to do this (I'm in medical school) but I do have some free time weekly to dedicate to the project and I am very meticulous naturally and not afraid of hard work. So to the good stuff, check out the pictures and let me know where I stand:





So this is the driver's front panel. You can see what he got down to here. To me it looks like he got through all the charcoal, then hit the factory silver and got through the primer. Then hit the dark grey/black and finally got to the light grey, grey and red underneath. Not sure if those three colors are different layers but it doesn't seem like like.




Here is the right front wheel well. Looks completely different than the photo above. Looks like he got through most of the paint but I'm not sure what else is going on here. This is the only part of the car that looks like this so I'm not sure if there was some sort of damage that occurred here. Looks like you can see down to fiberglass in some spots (although I thought the car was SMC??)





Driver side door.....looks like it has leprosy. Frankly its confusing to me. Looks like he got MOST of the charcoal off although it seems there is still some residual around where the mirror should sit. After that it seems like he started to get most of the silver off but its so dull I can't even tell if its primer or not. The black is under the silver for sure ( I took a little 100 grit sand paper and sanded it lightly) so I'm not sure if it is factory primer/sealer or what





Closer picture here. Where my finger is, thats where I think he got down to factory SMC. It doesn't really look like paint/primer and it doesn't seem like he got through it. I'm thinking that I should be sanding the car down to this layer


You have an idea of where I stand. My goal for now is to get all of the paint that remains + original paint+ primer off of the car and prep it to get painted here in my town. The only problem I'm having now is figuring out exactly what layer I need to get down to. The entire car basically looks like versions of the driver side door with the exceptions in the pictures of the driver side fender and the right front wheel well area where it looks like it took some damage.

So....what should my goal be in terms of removal? Should I go to factory SMC? How will I know when I'm there? Whats up with the layers of red/grey on the driver side fender? Luckily I didn't pay much for the car so I have some cash to spend in fixing her up. I would like to do as much as possible myself right up to the actual base coat of painting. My goal is to get it prepped for paint, with primer applied and blocked before taking it to the shop to get painted. Thanks for helping a noobie out here! I really appreciate it. I've already got the car up on stands and ready to start working....just a matter of direction at this point.