[Mismatch77]

Hi guys I’m repainting my 1977 trans am. This is my first complete respray. I’ve sprayed primer and SS color on a few old cars and truck body panels just to make them match the existing paint before so I guess I know just enough to hurt myself.


The car I’m gonna be painting got a very poor extremely hard maaco paint job in the 80’s. Car was originally white, resprayed black. The paint cracks and snaps off. I’ve never seen anything like it. 200 grit with a electric Bosch orbital barely scratches it. I’ve been using 40 grit to knock it down to the white underneath. The top surface of the car looks like checkerboard from all the black popping off revealing the white underneath. Other than some poorly fixed body damage the original white paint seems to be in good condition on all the metal parts so I’m planning on shooting my primer over that.
The black paint seems like it didn’t actually stick to the white, and it’s so hard there’s no scratching or denting it it’s like porcelain. I’ve never seen anything like it.


My problem is the time has come to start sanding all the fiberglass pieces and I’m worried about mucking up their lines and edges. I’ll have to do them by hand I know and I have some hand sanders and 2 3/4 paper in 40 120 320 and 400. It’s possible to do this all by hand, but it’s gonna probably twice as long as the whole rest of the car and the chances of me sanding down an edge or contour are higher than I want them to be. I have a direct to fiberglass epoxy primer. And it wouldn’t bother me take them down to that fiberglass.

Is there any product I can use on the fiberglass parts to either soften the paint or strip it without damaging the fiberglass? Is that even possible?

For the rear tail light grills, and the side marker light grills I think they are a cast metal and any light duty stripper should clean them up I assume. Is that correct? The bumper on the seem to be in really good condition. I’ve got the whole car torn down right now.