Hi guys, Am sorry am after some advice again.... The paint behind the grills at the back is looking a bit tatty.... what is the easiest way to redo it or make it look nice again??
Probab;y the trickiest place to paint and look smart. mine was a tedious job first thing to do before paint is try and get it as clean as possible. Use a very high strengh cleaner and a brush through the grill to do this, you can go up from the engine bay but also try going though the grills with quite an abrasive brush for a better clean. once that is done mask up the surround of the grill and spray on narrow setting if using air gun or even rattle cans if that is what you are doing. good luck
You might try some sort of wire brush on a stick. It's a tricky area to get into. I solved the prob by having the rear corners cut off, spraying the whole lot up inside before putting the new corners back on.
Hmmm. Good thread. When my bus was painted, you can see drips inside the vents. Quite big ugly ones too. It spoils the bus and I hate it when anyone notices. Nice to know there's a way of sorting it though.
I'm struggling with these too, theres about 6 layers of loose paint in mine, I've tried paint stripper and brushes on rods etc without too much success, but think I'm going to get the sand blaster on mine.
You can leave the engine in, just make sure it's well covered and sealed. I managed to do my whole engine bay this way.
I will try and put pit pick of mine up at the weekend. Like said earlier he used a specialist noisily on a spray gun but not to sure of name but it gave a nice textured look and is even so looks good I think with no drip marks.
VW obvioulsy weren't thinking about paints jobs 30 or 40 years down the line when they designed those rear vents!
Would a heat gun remove the old layers of paint inside the vents? If not, what about a propane torch? Of course you'd have to be careful you don't melt any cabinetry or headliner on the inside, but it still sounds cheaper than buying a sandblaster. Honestly though, I would just spray mine flat black on the inside and be done with it.
Mine started off like this after the POs attempt at a respray, so rubbish primer blown all over behind the vents on to unprepared original paint: We did some cleaning up with a small wire brush on a drill extension shaft and Paul had the idea to use a thick stoneschip type paint to cover all of the nastiness as it was impossible to prep to a proper exterior panel standard. Then it was painted in body colour. The detail image is blown up from a previously compressed picture, so it's a bit fuzzy: It works really well and looks good.
it's making me want to do mine now, mine are really rough they show signs of a possible fire years ago? all grubby and bitty behind but i try not to look it's in the queue of to-do's which gets longer weekly.
I like the idea of blasting but it must be hard to keep the media away from the engine and then clean the engine bay out afterwards
