Former VWDieselParts.com Forum

I intend to post more photos of my daily driver in this thread eventually, but for now i`ll just show the beginnings from purchase to new paint.

All of this took place in summer 2011.

As it sat at 30 year owners house:


First day:




OD rolled over a few times putting it at 314k


Immediately tore into the engine and found this bent rod:


I put it back together for a while and decided to paint the car on the cheap.

Here is the solder job I did to fill trim holes - used ordinary solder with acid flux & a plumbers style torch:






Stripped for paint:


A miracle there is no rust through anywhere on the body




Still looking for a couple of these wheels:


The only real dent on the body:

Rub it down really good with ajax and scotch brite pads:




Removes a lot of the flaky paint








Capped the old antenna hole


Block sanding this whole car is never going to work


Spent half the cost of the car on this sander/buffer and made short work of it


Much better




Sanding done






Baking soda scrub down to be sure I got all the flux off the metal


Basic masking ... paint doesnt stick to glass, and its really not a big deal

Setup for the tight areas


Excellent coverage with just one coat






Rolling using foam rollers


End of first coat:



Second coat:


And I don`t have pics of subsequent coats but here are some finished pics:





First time I ever drove the car, brought my bike just in case something went wrong:



This is the car 7 months later with snow tires and my bike on top:

pretty impressive. I want to repaint my 82 but don't have a good place to use my sprayer. I don't think the rollers would do a great job on red though. The silver looks pretty good. Of course the prep work is the hardest part.

Yes, on the white rabbit i`m going to use glossy rustoleum. It will buff out to a mirror shine! You just want to go thick, many coats - maybe 8 or 10 coats. And do a lot more sanding in between coats to get it really smooth, then wet sand the final coat and work it down with the buffer.

I thinned the paint nearly 50% with acetone so that it would lay down super flat.

I actually may take this rabbit back to the original turd brown color in a high gloss, I found it fairly difficult to prep the door jambs and stuff, so skipped them entirely - if doing any part of the interior its going to triple the time spent.

This is the site I originally referenced when researching this several years ago. Check out the gloss he achieved:

http://www.rickwrench.com/index79master ... paint.html

Yes I've seen that site. I did paint my 1951 Chevy pickup in the driveway in about 1989 using gloss red rustoleum thinned with mineral spirits. It came out nice and glossy but I didn't get enough coats on it but I ended up selling it to a guy who took it to Germany. I stripped that truck to bare steel then primed and painted it. That was a job!

Awesome, and yeah the stripping was really the most difficult. I`d have bead or soda blasted it if I lived in the country still, that would have been an excellent base for the roller job.

That's a great idea! No overspray! No excessive masking! Obviously lots of prep work and sanding, but that has to be done anyway. The link to the other site shows that it can be finished off nicely also.

I agree, really cuts a lot of that out and seems like it will last forever. I will post up progress of a glossy job next time.

Nice....hope my 78 Rabbit looks that good when I'm done....