An update after 3+ years. LOL.
Anyway, last year I disassembled the car and started stripping off the old primer. It seemed like a decent job by the previous owner as it did not come off that easy. Not too many surprises (I knew it had lower quarters done and had some dings here and there) with the only big surprise being the condition of the hood. It's got so much rust that I'm going to just buy an AMD 2" cowl. I don't trust the amount of grinding that's needed on a panel that appears to be very thin and rusted between the supports.
Last week I finally had a chance to get back to it and I finished removing all of the old primer, prepped the steel with the right grit, and did PPG's DX/SX579 and DX/SX520 metal conditioning treatment (to neutralize some old tiny rust spots that I was not sure were active).
Then 2 coats of DP90LF were sprayed.
Now the next step is making heads/tails of the body filler process. It's basically the same monkey
shit fight that people have over best synthetic oil, best wax, etc.
Some guys will
only put filler over bare steel, others will put it over epoxy primer. Very compelling arguments for both.
The PPG tech sheets say that since I'm going to be well out of my recoat window, I need to scuff the current primer with red scotchbrite/P180, recoat with DP90 again, allow it to cure for a day, and then scuff with P180/apply/shape the Rage Gold.
I'm just not sure if I hit it with DP90 again after finishing the filler to seal it or go straight to surfacer. Or if I trust the PPG recommendation of a 180 grit surface for the filler to adhere to- looks like 80 grit is what seasoned resto guys use.
Thoughts and comments are welcome.
Edit:
Oh, and on a cool side note I found old pit passes from Maple Grove stuck inside the dash. Lines up with the story that the old owner told me about it being an old drag car.
On top of the tickets there was metal fatigue in the torque boxes I had to fix, the car was sold by a performance dealer in Reading PA, and the car is a '68 but wasn't titled until '73 (LOL). Kind of neat.