Need some help with my interior work - painting/prep

[SovXietday]

I know there are a few guys who are good at this and have done this already so I'm looking for your help/advice.

I just took out most of the sound deadening on the floors. I used the dry ice method and got most of it off, but there's still some small stuck pieces and not to mention some tar and stuff like that still left. How do you guys get that kind of stuff off?

My spare tire well is all rusty, best way to clean that and get it ready for paint? I was thinking of maybe getting some rust converter from eastwood.com and using that since it's in a lot of hard to get spots and whatnot.

Any other tips or ideas would be great. I'm probably just going to scotchbrite the whole interior once it's all clean, wipe it down, tape everything up on the outside and then spray it.

[DC2.2GSR]

for the rest of the sound deadening - use a heat gun and a razor blade scraper. it's a bitch no matter how you do it, but it'll come off eventually.

the way i'd do the little bit of rust in the spare tire well is to media blast it. aluminum oxide works well for getting rid of rust. I'd stay away from the Eastwood rust converter until after blasting when there might only be a little bit of rust left. that stuff works great for very light rust on a bare surface, but if you're trying to actually cure real rust, it'll just be a band aid on the real problem. if you have a compressor, just go to Harbor Freight or something and get a cheap media blasting gun ($15-ish?) and some alum. oxide. it'll make a mess, but it shouldn't matter since you're prepping and spraying the whole interior anyway. just vacuum up the used media. make sure to etch/epoxy prime the bare metal so it doesn't start rusting again.

there are other ways to get rid of the rust but for something like what you described, i'd recommend blasting. it's the 100% perfect way to get rid of it all.

[SovXietday]

Great, thanks for that. Most of it is just minor surface rust so I'll give that a try.

Any kind of like solution or anything that I can spray on that tar/seam sealer to help get the rest of it up? I will be there for years with a heatgun and razorblade getting every little thing of tar off of there. Gotta be something that will at least just move away that tarry residue stuff, the bigger stuff I can get with the razorblade.

[DC2.2GSR]

to get rid of the residue and loosen some smaller pieces i'd go nuts with lacquer thinner. it won't mess up the surface underneath and it should melt away the stickiness pretty well.

[SovXietday]

Sweet, I'll give that stuff a try.

[SovXietday]

Ok, laquer thinner and a razorblade worked like a freaking charm. Big thanks dude.

I'll be picking up my car from getting caged either tomorrow or thursday. Going to pull out all of the wiring and whatever else not and start scotch briting I suppose.

Ok.

-What is a good yet fairly cheap paint gun to purchase? I'm not going to use it often enough to buy a good one but I don't want to buy complete garbage either.
-Where can I buy paint. Looking for a gunmetal single stage. With a single stage do I need to primer first?
-I want to paint the cage red to match my wheels. Best way to do this?

Also, any tips and tricks to help with this would be great. Like what to paint first, etc.

[Showoff03LS]

i have a paint gun. as far as paint, id find a gunmetal you want for a older car since alot of them were single stage colors and have it mixed by somewhere that does autobody paint and supply. as for the cage you should paint it before it gets installed , unless you can take it out when ever you want

[DC2.2GSR]

okay, lots of questions. i'll try to cover it all. haha. sorry i didn't see this sooner.

first of all, in my opinion - single stage is worthless. base/clear is not that expensive if you buy materials that aren't 'name brand', you'll barely pay more than the single stage and it'll look much better and be much more durable. i recommend Western clear and Dimenson basecoat for a cheap base/clear that will still look amazing. they're both Sherwin-Williams off brands. when i worked at Excel (the former sponsor of TST), we used Sherwin exclusively. the Sherwin rep told us outright that the Western RS6040 overall clear is identical to the Sherwin-Williams Ultra 7000 premium clear... which sold for $200+/gal. my boss then switched to the Western clear (about $80/gal. w/activator) and still uses it to this day... which really pissed off the rep haha. the same goes for basecoat. i can still login to the Sherwin website and read formula codes and they're 100% identical to the codes and mixture #'s for Dimension basecoat. as an example, for a gallon and a half of Honda Granada Black Pearl Dimension basecoat it was $106. that did my engine bay, my friend's entire Prelude w/lip kit and his kit, hood, and front bumper again after they were damaged... and i still have a quart and a half left. to use base/clear, the interior of your car would probably cost you a total of about $60, if that. the only place i use to buy that paint is Gilbertsville Auto Supply here in Gilbertsville PA.

as for the gun, i would recommend anything from DeVillbiss, Binks, and especially SATA and Anest Iwata. absolutely stay away from harbor freight/sears type of guns. they'll work okay one time, but from my experience they die pretty quickly. if you're interested, i have a DeVillbiss FLG3 that i could get rid of. i haven't used it since i got my SATA. i'd say $50.

for the cage, it's going to be a pain in the ass, no matter how you do it. it's one of those things that's completely reasonable to do, but it involves a ****load of tape and papering. no big deal, just time consuming. the way i would do it is to tape off the windows and anything else that matters real well from the inside. then, spray the cage red. when you are satisfied with the coverage and then basecoat dries, tape/paper the cage. then spray the gunmetal color on the rest of the interior. when that base dries, take all the tape and paper off. you'll have dry looking basecoat on everything, but the cage will be red. give everything a final wipe down and tack rag-ing and then clear everything at once. that way there'll be no tape lines or hard edges anywhere.

with every single thing you ever paint, just make sure you first put down etch primer over every bit of bare metal. direct to metal epoxy primer works great also, but is kind of overkill unless it's on an exterior panel. you never need high-build primer unless you are using a 2K catalyzed primer and are planning to block sand it all before paint.