Painting A 1967 AMC Rambler On A Budget - Paint Your Car for $1,016

The truth seared when we went to the local insurance-funded body shop to pick up a staff commuter that had been hit hard by a driver who had been both texting and eating when she drilled her Honda into its back seat. The car had been fixed, sure, but there was orange peel, drips in the jambs, a series of scratches that had been simply fogged over, and a bill for $8,500. Days like those prove bodywork can be expensive, and you don't always get what you pay for.

The resulting migraine cemented our decision to paint our '67 Rambler project ourselves, from prep to the actual spraying of the color, to allow ourselves the kind of control needed to really get the whole job looking the way we wanted it at a price we could afford. We'll admit it's a lot of work and there is some science involved, but we're not diving into this without a little experience. We've built a foundation of knowledge over the last few years by prepping the Disco Nova in the May '05 issue and having it sprayed by 1-Day Paint & Body and by sanding and prepping the '65 El Camino in the Apr. '06 issue and getting it partially painted before Tech Editor Smith's kid drove it into a ditch. We also recently practiced on the Rambler in unseen corners of the trunk and engine bay to get our technique and tools sharpened.

All the mistakes, endless questioning of local paint guys, and some pointers from a paint-and-body class that John McGann took at a local college have prepared us to possibly ruin a perfectly good AMC just to show you what it's like to tackle an entire car. Just remember, drips are OK if you're the one who put them there.

This is the Rambler before we started the project. It doesn't look too bad, but upon close scrutiny, things here and there stand out. The car was covered with small dents and dings, as well as a fender that needed some attention. (see February 2007 issue of Car Craft)	The basecoat in a two-stage dries flat. Kind of cool looking, huh?
The paint job was inexpensive, mostly because it is a scuff-and-shoot, meaning you don't change the color, are OK with the jambs, and don't have to do any bodywork besides fixing minor dents, scratches, and cracked filler from previous repairs. There are no rear wheels because we exploded the differential on the dragstrip and sent the axles to Moser.

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The original color for the Rambler was a metallic called Barbados Blue. We chose to use a two-stage metallic urethane paint, meaning the color is sprayed and then a clearcoat is sprayed on top of it. Single-stage means all the elements of the paint go on in one coat. Single-stage paint is cheaper and is good for a project that will be kept indoors or as a show car because the paint is simply not as durable. If you are using a metallic paint like we are, the clearcoat will protect the integrity of the paint through the years of washing and buffing. The same goes for metalflake, flame jobs, and pearls.

We removed the body trim with the Eastwood door-panel and trim-removal set and left the windshield alone. You can get away with it if the windshield gasket rubber butts against the paint instead of the trim.	Paint prefers to stick to a solid foundation of old paint rather than to filler or bare metal. The only time you should start grinding it away is when cracks in the paint indicate problems lurking at the filler level. In this area, we had to dig to fix the problems.
We sanded with 80-grit paper on a DA to assess the situation. It is not necessary to go all the way to metal, just sand until the cracks are gone then switch to 150 to get the area level before adding filler.