[mrayback]

Am in the process of getting a '66 Fastback painted, and one of the guys bidding on the job talked about "shimming" the doors, fenders, hood and rear lid. I guess he paints the door jambs and openings with the parts off, then mounts everything up but shims it out away from the frame, and shoots the exterior .

Being a newbie I'm still learning about this stuff, but I would have thought you would get a better job by painting the parts off the car. Yes?? No?? The guy has been painting cars for better than twenty years and comes recommended....I guess my problem is I was expecting something different, but hey, I don't paint cars.

Any feedback greatly appreciated!

[Fordgazm]

I think you misinterpreted him . Shimming is the process where he lines up all the panels so that the gaps are all perfectly even . It makes a huge difference in how the final job looks . If you didnt misinterpret him , then that is not the correct way to paint a car .

[mrayback]

I guess I'll have to run that by him again. I'm almost positive that he was NOT talking about shimming for alignment. I think he was saying that he was 'widening the gaps' to 'spray around the corners', so to speak.

Is it SOP to spray a restoration car with all the bolt-on components already in place?

[Fordgazm]

The best paint job will have the panels painted , then hung . So you would want it apart for painting , unless the paint is something weird , like a candy color or metal flake , or pearls . Those wont look right unless the whole car is sprayed at the same time .

[Dom]

Shimming is when you instert metal tabs to space the fenders and stuff out.

He may have his own terms too.

[killamuh50]

ive never heard of shimming who knows what hes talking about. see if someone thats painted for 20 years is talking to someone that has no clue about what he is doing. that person is gonna bs. Just to get that green paper in his pocket if you understand what im talking about. only thing i could think about shimming is to shim the doors out so they align like the other guy said. kinda like shimming out a rear end gear when your are setting it up you shim the pinion gear to the ring gear so you get the right backlash on the gear. too loose the rear will wine too tight the gears will heat up. as for spraying a car really depends on what you want yea if you take every panel off and spray it and put it back on you can do the jams etc. but you dont have to you can always mask out the jams and do it all at the same time. people dont understand about show paint jobs thats why they cost $20,000 and up because of the work envolved. when your taking something say down to bare medal and building it back up with primers and doing the body work its more time consuming then just sanding down the old paint and spraying over it. Thats why people u see with show cars that look like glass look that good its the time envolved in doing the work and they will have your car for a year or more. you cant expect a paint job to come out lookin like glass with a bad prep job. looks like you have a older car thats a classic do it right get it taken down to the metal and build back up. just go get a quote and tell them thats what u want and i bet the price of what he told you before say it was $1200 will jump to $6000 when you tell them that. There was this guy in the baltimore area that did my dads 66 ford galaxie im sure hes been painting for awhile cause his shop has been there for awhile. that paint job sucked and my dad paid him like $1500 and he didnt even take the bumpers off my brother stopped in and acted like he didnt know nothing and asked him hey you gonna take the fender off that and all the guy was like nah. he just tapped it off then it looked like he missed the side with clear and it looked dry it was single stage he put on it cause i could tell when i started sanding it. i just started painting and did it for a about year and a half. i did my dads galaxie over in about around 2003 and it looked 100 times better then what that guy did and im sure he had more experenice then me. I just read alot and learned tricks from this guy john that helped me out alot and got enuff experience painting stuff over and over. its really all what u want and if you want to do it right the whole thing about getting a car looking show quality is time time time. it takes time to get stuff like that. thats why those guys show cars look like glass because they will have it wetsanded down over and over and cleared over and over till it looks like glass. but good luck on your project hope it turns out the way you want it too. but always remember if someone knows something that you dont and they can bs you to get that loot out your pocket they are gonna do it.