Sanding Door Jambs and Edges

 After much thought, I decided that I was going to paint the hood edges and door jambs, but NOT strip and primer them. Instead I'd do what many other Porsche painters do and just sand down the factory paint. The paint here was never painted over and is in really good shape. I just need to clean it up and sand it down to prep it for the primer-sealer.

One HUGE problem I wish I would have thought about is over-spray. Before, when I started work on the car, I decided to just sand the doorjambs after prepping the rest of the car. I did not realize how much paint would get onto the edges of the jambs. And since that primer has stuck on top of un-cleaned, un-sanded OEM paint, it will not stick for long. So now I've got to sand down the over-sprayed paint, then sand down into the factory paint. If you are doing this at home, sand your jambs BEFORE you do any prep work, maybe just after stripping. Then, you can just leave the overspray on the well-prepared surface and just work over it. It'll save you a few hours.

Here are some pictures of my jambs, before. The over-sprayed areas are all much lighter in color:

Here are some after pics. I just used my DA sander with leftover disks of 180 where I could. then I used the Mouse Sander in most of the other spots. I finished hand-sanding here and there in hard-to-reach areas. I sanded to 180 in all spots, and then to 400 in big flat spots that were easy to get to or where sanding scratches might show up. I had to keep telling myself that I'm not making a show car.

Don't forget to sand the edges of the door that will be visible too. I taped back the rubber (not shown) so I could get all up under there while sanding.

I also sanded down the edges of the hood, shown here, and the edges of the hood bay between the fender and the engine compartment. There is a gutter type thing with about 10 screws and two rubber pads that I removed and sanded. I also sanded the edges of the headlight covers, and the edges of the sunroof hole and gutter. All of these will be painted after the car is painted.

(I'm calling these 6 hours: bodywork/sanding hours, since they should have been done much earlier.)

Total Time spent: 6 hours
Money spent: $0