Airbrush Online

Hey Ripper...

I heard somewhere that you know about Chevy vans. I have one that "used to be" blue and gray (silver?). All the blue paint is, of course, peeling off the primer. Short of removing the primer that Chev laid on the metal, is there a way to get paint to stick to that anymore?

The van I have is ugly as he**, but I'd like to at least paint the the part that used to be blue to keep some of it from rusting out any worse.

Unfortunately, that is a common problem and one I used to get paid well by the local GM dealers to repair. There is nothing you can do except sand it down and repaint it. I have an idea......while you're waiting for parts on your bike project, why not have the kids in the class sand down the van? Then you could take it to one of those cheap paint places like Maaco (which is owned by AAmco Transmissions, by the way) and they'll paint it for you.

I used to do alot of business with the local Maaco shop when I had my body shop. Whenever I got in a full paint job that wasn't an expensive custom job, I'd farm out the paint to Maaco. Giving the painter a $20.00 bill on each job was well worth the result. I used to even bring the materials over at first, until they proved to me that their paint wouldn't fall off the car on the way back to my shop.

They actually do fairly decent paint work, it's the rest of their work that bites. I used to do ALL of the prep work, mask up the whole car, remove all the moldings, etc... and drive the car over (you should have seen the looks I got driving a masked up car with no bumpers (if they were chrome) all the windows taped up with just the centers left open so I could see......etc....

When I got the car back, I would wetsand and polish it, then put it all back together and it would look almost as good (well, not almost, but...) as if the whole job were done in my shop. I gave my customers a decent paint job at an affordable price using this method. In the 10 years I did this, I never had a car come back with a serious problem involving the paint.

wow. sand the whole van down? Not all the way to metal though, right?

I was toying with the idea of doing a rattle can camo job on the van in blues and white (water camo? LOL ) and just letting it rot away. The drive train is fine, but the body is really bad at the bottoms of the doors and along the side behind the driver.

Maybe I should just part out the engine, tranny and rear end and let the rest go to a junk yard. Sanding it all down and doing new paint is much more than I'd hoped to hear, to be honest. It's sad - it was such a nice looking van when I bought it in 2000. Now it looks like the doors are going to fall off any minute...and I took good care of it too.

What was the issue anyway - the blue pigment they used or the primer? I've seen every late 80s to mid 90s Chev and GMC around here that had blue on it peel like a bad chrome job - even the little Cavaliers. With the thousands of vehicles this affected, GM should go to jail for these screw ups

Well, you can blame the EPA and the tree-huggers for all of it. In the 80's, it was decided that automotive paint was the scourge of the earth. Don't pay attention to the fact that if you combined all of the automotive paint going on, including body shops and manufacturing plants, all of it in one year did not add up to the same amount of pollution that Dow chemical put out in one factory IN ONE DAY.... . But I digress....

In an effort to appease the EPA (they should be arrested, not appeased. More illegal things are done by the EPA itself than by any body shop or car manufacturer, I can tell you that much. Remember the scrap program they had awhile back? It was so major corporations like Dow could get "environmental credit".. iInstead of cleaning up their act, they could crush a few old cars and get points toward being allowed to continue to pollute. Isn't that special?) all 3 major US automakers tried several attempts at water-borne primers. They were all miserable, monumental failures as you can see on your own vehicle. They continue to try to this day and have yet to come up with a viable alternative to regular solvent borne primers. It's because water and paint should only be mixed on the inside of your house, not on the outside of your car.

You have to remove that primer from the vehicle. Nothing will stick to it. You will see, however that once you sand through the paint, the primer pretty much disappears almost instantly. You can't avoid sanding off if you wanted to.

I would gladly buy the van from you, but getting it here would be a major task. What do you think you would want for it? It might be worth it if the price is right.

Give me a price for the drive train.

I might really be interested in selling it to you cheap, but how would we get it out there?

If I had a way back here to Cheese Hell I'd drive the whole thing out there, and let you part it yourself (this old Beauville even has all the seats...in good shape). The engine is tight...and reliable as all get-out. The tranny is only a 3spd, and the rear end is geared low - but I love the way it drives. Reliable as anything. The only problem the engine has is the fittings on the hoses for the remote oil cooler are leaking...and I never seem to remember to buy new hoses...so the bottom of the engine needs a bath.

Wonder if we wait for Spring...maybe I can drive it out with the chopper in the back, and ride home to hell on that.

OK, seriously think of a price and let me know soon. I might be tearing mine apart this week. I'm hoping to find something easy to fix as opposed to what I expect to find in there. I got a surprise today. My friend Scooby is on vacation next week and offered to come help me tear it down.

Ripper,

Email me your phone number. I have no idea what the drivetrain alone is worth. I was just going to sell the whole van as a vehicle (I've got her listed locally at $1000. OBO but no takers). But let's talk about it...I can't afford to run it much any more with $2.00 per gallon for gas, maybe we can make a deal we'll both like. All I use it for lately is towing my little bike trailer. Among other things, if you want she'll pull a big trailer - she's got all the electric brake hookups and controller, etc. And a heavy class hitch.

Like I said the engine needs no repair - just a oil line or two and she's ready to run in whatever you drop her into. (Unless you want to hotrod the engine or something).

OK, I'm planning on ripping down the engine Tuesday. It was planned for tomorrow, but we're supposed to get snow again.......