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The long (and scary) process of painting the car has begun. all of the welding is finished (apart from the engine mounts - but I will do these when the engine arrives). I have started to strip the paint off of the shell with the intention of getting the whole thing back to bare metal.

After this is done I will treat any rust spots, preferably by grinding or blasting them out, but if this is not possible with an acid based rust killer. Then comes the job of paint preparation, that's the really scary bit, that's where it all goes horribly wrong (tee hee). As anyone will tell you, the secret to any good paint job is in the preparation, the paint is in effect only a very thin layer, and so any dents, scratches scuffs, etc will show up as the paint will follow the contours of the body. There is a definite art to preparing a body for paint, for the likes of us mere mortals the best thing is patience and care. Good body guys will be able to look at a panel and see exactly what needs doing and where, whereas the rest of us can look and look and still miss a lot of stuff - do it, keep doing it until you think its perfect - then do it again. I once spent 6 weekends prepping a car, I thought I had been really thorough, but it isn't until you get the gloss coat on that you start to notice things that you have missed, stuff like small scratches (a bit of grit on your sandpaper is a usual culprit), or small pin dents that you hadn't seen.

Hopefully all will go well and it will come out good, but it's been a while since I painted a car and so I have been praying a lot (lol) - Fingers crossed someone will be looking down on me (and hopefully not laughing).