GTO 2009 Paint Job - The Decision and Stripping
The year is 2009, and little did I know it, this was going to be a huge year for the GTO.
I figured I would get a few estimates on painting the car, knowing full well, I probably would not be able to afford it. I had figured I would have to wait until I retire to paint it. But what the hell, let get a few estimates.
What I found ..... Very few people like to paint/restore whole cars, other than true restoration shops. The few guys I squeezed a rough estimate out of said it would be around $15,000 give or take..... Way out of my budget. And to be honest, with the lack of interest, I would not have let them touch my car anyway...
So backup plan for 2009... Tri-Power. Even though 1967 the Tri-Power was not available, it was common for people to swap out the Four Barrel for it. So I came across a very nice restorable 66 Tri-Power set up. About $1300 if I remember correctly. ....
At this point in time, I was a Service Advisor at a local Buick/GMC dealer, and I was enjoying my job. The Bodyshop manager Jim was an old school body man, and was a great guy, and we got along great, and he had a 65 GTO in his youth. He always said he also did not like painting whole cars, so I never approached him about mine..... But a few weeks after I bought the Tri-Power, he walks up to me in the shop.... and says...... "Hey, you wanna paint the car?" .... I was like..... wut?. And he repeated.... Let's paint it.... I said if you are serious, I just got to sell the Tri-Power and I will have the car stripped down by next weekend. He said he was serious, and that threw the whole thing into motion.
Tri-Power was sold in days.... and the teardown began. I decided to strip the car in my garage, bagging and documenting every nut and bolt. I would leave the drivetrain in, and the dashboard and headliner. Everything else will come out.... It took about a week, and it was stripped. I had one of our towing vendors pick it up on a flatbed and brought it to the dealer. The following weekend I hired a mobile Baking Soda Blaster vendor to come and blast all the paint off the car. The only downside to this process, because I had left the dash in the car, is that I had little plops of baking soda that would fall out of the underside of the dash for a few years after it was done.
These segments will be picture heavy since I documented the process nearly every day....
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