AUTOMOTIVE BODY AND PAINT PROJECT

1981 Toyota Celica GTA

Paint/Body Work

About

For my Senior Project in high school, I decided to repaint my 1981 Toyota Celica GTA, despite having no prior experience in automotive paint or body. I had always been fascinated by cars from a young age. I remember I partially learned how to read by reading the makes and models offof cars while on road trips with my parents, and soon was able to name nearly every car I saw on the road. And so it seemed only fitting that I take on this project to improve my first car.

I initially did not even have a place to do the prep work or the actual painting. But soon I was able to use a friend's garage, and a local automotive paint shop agreed to allow me to use their paint gun/space.  Much time was spent scouring the internet for resources on how to paint a car, watching countless videos and trawling through endless forum posts. At the end of it, I still wasn't super confident on my ability to paint, but I figured it was something that I just needed to jump in and do. 

After purchasing a couple hundred dollars worth of paint, sandpaper, power sanders, respirators, smocks, body filler, degreaser, and painter tape, not to mention the countless hours spent watching videoWith that, came the many, many, many hours of disassembly, sanding, and other prep work.

The 1981 Toyota Celica GTA was a special 10th anniversary edition Celica that came in a copper/beige two tone paint, with pinstriping from the factory. My particular Celica had some signs of its (at the time) 31 year history, with a few rust spots, dents, and faded ((original!) paint.

The Process

As I soon came to learn, painting a car is 95% prep work, and only 5% actual painting. This meant completely removing all of the existing paint, primer, and any body filler, down to the bare metal. Equipped with my respirator and rotary power sander, I dove in. Removing the paint took an exorbitant amount of time, as I spent nearly every day after school and the entirety of my spring break cooped up in my friend's garage sanding away at my car. Eventually, my friend's dad suggested to me that I use paint stripper to quicken the process. However, even with my chemical backup, the 31 year old paint proved to be very stubborn as there would be parts of the paint thatstill refused to be removed, even after the sanding/chemical combo.

In addition to subjecting myself to paint particles and chemical paint stripper, I also had to endure the most horrific smell of body filler, as I set to get to work on fixing various dings and dents in the car. 

After countless hours spent in that windowless garage, with no sense of the passing of time, the car was finally ready to be towed to the paint shop.
However, even the painting, which was only 5% of the work, was arduous work. Due to my inexperience, I sprayed on the primer layer too thick, and had to spend a lot of time sanding it down to ensure a smooth final finish for the paint. But at 3AM, the car was finally finished,

I could have picked an easier, a much less time-intensive project, or at least a project that I had some experience in already. However, as my final Senior Project, I wanted to challenge myself with something that I ultimately ended up enjoying. Throughout this project, I appreciated the somewhat reckless approach of diving into such a large project with little to no background experience, as I realized that sometimes the best way to learn is just to do it. Due to the time intensiveness of the project, I gained a fuller appreciation of the many hours put into countless projects, with the hope of a worthwhile result. While there are many things in hindsight that I could have done better with this paint job, given my experience at the time and the relatively less time I devoted to this (in hindsight), I was very happy with the end result.