Hot Rod Restoration: Prepping for Primer & Body Filler

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Joel Jones, I own Jones, Inc.. A company that specializes in auto restoration and customization. Here we've moved into the paint shop and I'm going to show you how to properly prepare these panels for the application of body filler, or primer or even paint. The steps, that you're going to need to follow are going to be repeated over and over again on every single stage. Anytime you get ready to, apply the next material. Whether it is epoxy primer or filler primer or anything else, you're going to have to prep these panels in exactly the same way. Grease and contaminants are your enemy. Dust is your enemy. And so, what happens is, is when you sand these vehicles, dust starts to accumulate in little areas and if you were to go ahead and spray primer directly over those dusty areas, then the dust is going to be trapped underneath and it could cause an adhesion problem, and eventually bubbling and paint cracking, and so on and so forth. So we need to take care of that before we apply any of the material on top of that. And the way you, first, the first step in doing that is to, do what I call a dry wipe. You always what to use some solvent resistant latex gloves, to protect not only your hands from the solvents, these are bad, bad solvents, they're bad for your health. But, it also protects you, or protects the car from contaminations from your oil in your skin, or things that you've touched, the lunch that you just ate, anything like that that might be on your skin, that can cause an adhesion problem So, you start out with a clean automotive grade wiping pad. I like to use "wipe alls", but there are a lot of other name brands out there that you can use. And you use compressed air with a blow gun. So what you're going to do, is you're going to use the paper towel to agitate the dust, to loosen it from the surface, and then use the air gun to blow it away. Once you've done that over the whole entire panel, you can see that the paper towel has dust accumulated inside of it. So, periodically you're going to want to unfold the paper towel and get a fresh clean surface to use. So once you've done that across the whole entire panel, which we've already done now, you're going to want to switch over to an actual chemical wax and grease remover, for your final step in preparing the panel. Do not skimp when it comes to the wax and grease remover. You want to buy a good quality product. A lot of them evaporate really, really quickly and they, does, that does not give them enough time to actually dissolve the wax or grease. So, pour a little bit of the product on the paper towel, and again you wipe in one direction, you don't want to smear anything back over the panel. So, you start on one side of the panel and you wipe forward, and then you go back and do the same thing. And you continue to do that, until you've accumulated so much dust that it's dirty and then you open the pad back up getting a fresh surface, and you continue. Once, you've got the panel sufficiently cleaned, you want to grab your air. And you want to evaporate off all of the wax and grease remover. You cannot put paint on this surface, if you have wet wax and grease remover. It's going to cause, all kinds of adhesion problems. The wax and grease remover is going to contaminant your paint and it's going to, not going to stick, or it will bubble, or it will fish-eye or do all kinds of really bad stuff. So now, this half of the trunk is ready to go. You can spray primer on it, you want to make sure that you do this surface, and that surface and then systematically go around the whole entire car, in preparation to spray the next set of primers."