1978 Datsun 280Z repaint
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My 280Z was originally a brown exterior, brown interior car as was typical in the 1970s and 1980s. A previous owner changed the color to navy blue when I bought the 280Z in 2012. This car was not immune to rust damage common with first generation Z cars including areas around the rear wheel arches including the dogleg and rear quarter panel. Also the owner whom I purchased the 280Z from had stored it outside in an apartment parking lot in North Texas for some time and it had many dents due to hail storm damage. The following pictures show the 280Z in the navy blue color when I purchased it. The pictures were taken by the previous owner before the car suffered hail damage.
The high school auto body class that repainted my Jeep J10 had sweet talked me into letting them work on the 280Z. I was reluctant because I had higher expectations for body and paint work quality on the 280Z. Long story short, it took them 2 years, they did not do good body work, botched the paint job and caused more dents in reassembly than dents they took out!
The dog leg and rear quarter panel on the left driver side had rust damage and had to be cut out and replaced with new sheet metal. This was the only part of the entire car that the high school auto body class did an acceptable job on.
I discovered the school used only 2K primer followed by base coat and clear. 2K does not have exceptional adhesion to older paint finishes. They should have used an epoxy primer. However, what was more horrifying is the base coat was not even applied evenly so primer was visible through the paint and they already had applied the clear coat so it was too late to easily fix the problem!
And to add salt to my wounds, the school class recklessly reinstalled the rear hatch door and evidently dropped it on the ceiling of the car causing a new massive ridge in the roof! My heart sank when I saw this.
So lesson learned folks, don't waste your time with a high school auto body class especially if the teacher is complicit about the quality issues. Their work caused my 280Z value to plummet by over half. Also due to 2 years of little use and not properly running the car on a regular basis to ensure fresh fuel and oil is flowing, the 280Z completely died by the time I took it back. I had to replace literally everything in the fuel system including dropping the fuel tank to get the car running normally again.
I thought I'd just cut my losses with this 280Z and trade up for a better original survivor. In 2019 when I received my 280Z back, I learned that first generation Z car values had shot up so buying an original survivor without problems was no longer as inexpensive as I originally anticipated. So I decided to invest more into resurrecting the 280Z I already had. At this point in time, my 280Z had 3 paint jobs - the original factory brown, the navy blue done sometime in the 1990s, and then again in the same navy blue by the school in 2017-18. The final paint coat was poorly done that it was too risky to try to paint over it so I decided to just completely start over and strip everything back down to bare metal. This time, I took off all the body panels and doors to make stripping and quality repainting easier. The bonus with this step is this reveals areas of the body like the structure beneath the front fenders that were normally inaccessible so you can easily clean them and apply more undercoating. My 280Z appears to only have factory primer on those areas and was starting to show signs of surface rust.
One thing I learned that is a danger with sandblasting a first generation Z car, the sheet metal is very thin and extremely prone to warping. It took multiple applications of body filler, high build polyester primer, and wet sanding effort to get all the surfaces smooth again for paint. To check for smoothness, I made the surfaces wet and looked at the reflections for dents and waves. Alternatively, you could use a rattle can guide coat. I also learned more of the history on my 280Z after stripping exposed signs that the car had experienced multiple accidents including being rear ended and sideswiped on the right side causing a big crater in the door. If you want to strip your first generation Z car, I might suggest considering chemical stripping for the wide body areas and limit sandblasting to the seams, corners and door edges.
Once the body was ready for paint, I decided this time around to farm out the final paint step to a pro paint shop. Since the 280Z was completely stripped down of all its color, I had the flexibility to repaint it in any color of my choice. I happened to spot a 2015-2017 BMW in Sakhir Orange in a parking lot and was impressed with how the color appeared almost maroon in the shade and changed to a brilliant rust orange in the sun. That was the perfect color for a 280Z!
