This is my first complete, I am painting my 69 and am wondering if I should take the doors off and paint them seperate as well as the hood and trunk lid. This is ofcoarse the way I have always done fenders and bumpers etc on modern cars. Is there a good way to mark the door and hood alighnment before I take them off? They are all aligned perfectly right now. I am not doing a body off because the underside looks great and nobody will see it anyway. I do have the interior totally removed as I am painting the dash and redoing the interior. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hi, I'm about to do my first overall too and was wondering the same thing,It seems from all I've read that its better to paint the back side and edges first, assemble the parts on the car and spray them all at the same time to get the color to match correctly.I to have the interor out of my 67 and am tring to decide if I want the dash black or deep saphire blue (body color).I'm leaning towards black.I just got my 1.3 spray tip and a rebuild kit for my yesterday, :cool: Good luck Ed...P.S. check out autobodystore.com It's a cool bb for pro and novist painters.loads of good info there....

All comes down to prefrence, some paint parts seperate then assemble, i'd rather cut the jambs,etc then reassemble the whole car and then spray. Exception to this is putting stripes on an SS hood. Never again will i attempt to do it on the car. Hard on the back leaning over that far to mask it off.
As far as marking hinge locations, scribe around the hinge, line it leaves will be visable enough to see to realign the doors.

Great question, I just did this about 4 weeks ago and was helped along the way by a suggestion from Team Chevelle! Here was the idea - in every hinge location to the door, hood, trunk, fender, body, etc. drill an 1/8" hole through both peices. When reassembling you only have to locate the 2 holes with a dowel rod or something similar. From experience, it may not be perfect (not sure why) but it will be very close. It will prevent you from damaging the paint most likely the first time you close the door or hood.

I had never painted a car disassembled, but there are many hidden advantages and I will continue to do this in the future. The inside of the doors, fenders, and trunk look fantastic. The doors and fenders have almost no orange peel since they were painted on their side allowing wetter coats w/o sags. You can paint each part seperately and focus on that part until you like it then move on. If you have to go back and fix a fender (like I did) the rest of the car doesn't have to be taped or anything.

There are possible color problems if you are painting metallics, mine was a solid red and is very consistent. Another suggestion from someone who didn't do it this way (me) - pull the hinge pins in the doors rather than unbolting them from the body and doors. If you don't, you will wish you had when trying to put the doors back on. For me, the biggest problem was tapping off the engine compartment, trunk, and dash since they were already painted and ready to go. That took some thought.

One other comment, because it takes a little longer to complete a coat you must be somewhat concerned about overspray. I was really taking my time on the first clear coat and noticed it overspraying where I began. On the last coat I hustled through and it wasn't a problem, but I don't have an expensive booth either.

I read somewhere on here, about someone who drilled a couple of 1/8 th Dia. holes through the hinges before he/she removed the doors, hood ,trunk lid etc. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Not my idea-- just passing it on.
John

Thanks all, How do I pull the hinge pins on the doors?

There is another post right now about this. In a complete restoration you would probably take everything apart, replace the hinge bushings and pins, then reassemble. After getting all the alignment correct, then the pins should be easy to pull out - the bottom one goes up and the top one down.

Otherwise it is pretty difficult to do w/o removing the door first.