1979 Bed re-paint

[blue68]

My brother has a '79 longbed and he's wanting to prep and re-paint the inside of the bed as professional-like as he can. Painting is the easy part, but prepping is more difficult. There's probably over $150 worth of dead layers of rattle can paint back there thats been used as a "rust stop" over the past years. The top layer of that is peeling up. You can take a water hose and blast most of the top layer off, but it's still al chipped looking. He wants to get it down to the bare shiny metal and work from there. We've tried using a wire wheel attachment and all kinds of stuff, but we cant quite get through all those layers of old spray paint. Any ideas? What kind of attachment is needed to sand to shiny metal? As always, Thanks

[67heavystepside]

rent you a bead or sand blaster, or find someone to sand blast it.

[blue68]

Wouldnt that mess up the finish of his paint from "overspray" from the sandblaster? Is there a less messy way to do it?

[71Ford100]

If I was you I would wire wheel as much of the paint of as I could then use a sand blaster with fine sand (someone correct me if I'm wrong on the kind of sand). using the wire wheel first will greatly decrease the amount of sand you use and the time sandblasting. After your done just have your brother do a really through job of blowing the sand off and out of the bed. If he does a good job blowing out the sand it shouldn't affect his paint job at all.

[FORDification]

I'm still a firm believer in using the 3M composite stripping wheels for stuff like this...they eat through paint very easily, but it's soft enough that it won't damage sheetmetal, as long as you keep it moving. However, you're going to probably go through at least 10-15 of them....at least.

A knotted-wire wheel in an angle grinder will work too, but will take a little longer. However, it works great for getting nooks and crannies the 3M wheel can't get into.



The 3M wheel is the blue one on the right, worn down about half way. The knotted wire wheel is mounted in the angle grinder.

[blue68]

Thanks everyone. I think I'm going to tell him to try out some 3M Composite stripping wheels first. I think they'll most likely get the job done.

[cjs_72f250]

i have a related question so i wasn't sure if i should start a new thread or keep it here...so here goes:

the former owner of my truck ruined the awesome Grabber Blue paint by hand brushing white house primer paint over it.

any clever way to remove the house paint without ruining the Grabber Blue beneath it? a whire wheel or the 3M wheels will obviously eat through the blue too, right?

would scrubbing the house paint with Brake Cleaner and a rag work? that's what i've been doing to clean up some metal brackets, etc. any other ideas?

[mrsnicks]

Blue68 get a big ol jar of naval jelly and let is soak into the top layers of the paint if you want.. This will soften up/dissolve the paint so it can be scraped of with a scraper, or in some cases blasted out with a pressure washer.

Just an alternative for you.

Patrick

[flyboy2610]

Use a pressure washer. I wouldn't hand scrape it or you'll be repainting the whole truck.