Fender Follow Up- A Few Words About Paint

In my video post, I mentioned "compatibility problems" in reference to the self etching primer. Some primers and top coats don't get along well, as something in their chemical makeup will cause the top layer not to adhere to the bottom layer. The self-etching primer in a can, from what I've been told, does not have this problem, so any future primers will go over it and not fall back off.

I probably could have used any primer to protect the metal, since it's probably going to get sanded back off in the future anyway.

I did some investigation of the fender you saw in the video. As I mentioned, those fenders came from a '68 truck, so their history can only be discovered by what's under their paint. I sanded down a small spot just to see what was there. I went all the way to bare metal. Here's what I found, from the metal all the way up to the blue paint my Dad had put on:

Black primer
White (probably the factory color)
Grey (primer)
Blue (pretty familiar)
Red Primer
Green (a thin layer- a scratch coat perhaps?)
Red Primer
Grey Primer
White (paint job at time of purchase)
 Blue (no primer beneath blue- inexpensive paint job)

This fender has a rich color history.

So that's ten different colors. Adding a new color on top of an old one usually isn't a big deal, but if the paint layers get too thick it can make them crack, split, or more susceptible to chipping. I'll need to evaluate the cab and see how much paint is on it. Looking at the truck's number plate, it was light green when it rolled out of the factory. Who knows how many layers are on top of that. For this fender, I may or may not go back to bare metal, but I think for the parts that end up on the truck, I'll strip it all the way down to at least the factory primer, should it prove sound.