About six months ago I purchase a bone stock '92 civc cx hatchback. The body was pretty straight and the motor was in pretty good shape for 142k miles. The original owner had done an overall repaint over the OEM frost white with some Phantom Grey in metallic instead of pearl. The paint job was ok but had a lot of orange peel and there was next to no surface prep or body work done prior to the paint going on. So there were several spots where dust and surface defects were under the paint.

Then, about 6 weeks ago I was rear ended by a semi at a red light. He was at fault but replacing the rear bumper, supports, and tailgate totalled the car. As it is I paid well above book for the car because I wanted a stock hatch rather than a riced/raced one. So I was in the hole for the value of the car.


Here's anice shot showing some of the ripple left on my paint job from the imact as well as lots of orange peel and the surface defects below it.


So, I decided I would learn to do some body and paint work and refinish the car myself. Since the repaint color would have been quite difficult to match and I didn't really like the color that much anyway, I am going to repaint it all.

Oh and the blue interior is coming out as well.

Here it is with the interior out.


Here is it all disassembled.

I started stripping off the grey paint only to find that this was going to take a ridiculous amount of time. So i scrapped that idea and just started blocking the whole car.


Here's some more work the next day. I discovered it's much more difficult to block curves. Sponges are my best friend now. I am very fortunate that the car is very straight already. Just a few little dings that need to be ironed out.


For those of yuo that don't know what I'm talking about when I say "blocking," here's a good example. Sanding in an 'X' pattern with a flat surface will reveal the low spots or 'dings.' If you can't block them out then you need to use a plastic (like bondo) to fill it in. Here the hood. Keep in mind that the hood was pretty straight to begin with.


Here it is after its done being blocked.

Heres the other side of the car bing blocked.

At this point I am actually done blocking the car and bumpers I just dont have pics of all that uploaded yet. And for perspective, I have put about 40 hours of labor into what you see so far. I plan to prime and block the car 2 more times with filler work done in the middle, so I have quite the project ahead of me.

Next up, remove the motor, throw motor away, prepare engine bay and jamps for paint.



Modified by nikolai. at 4:37 PM 4/20/2007

 

doing it right. that's what i like to see

 

good job on everything, props to you for doing all the work yourself !

 

cool project keep up the great work!!

 

nice info.

 

so far so good..good luck

 

Looking good.

 

i love the restoration project threads. keep up with the good work.

 

These threads area awesome! Subscribed.

 

looking good what color is going on it

 

Awesome