1968 Ford Thunderbird

1968 Ford Thunderbird
My dad and I are currently looking into purcahsing a 1968 Ford Thunderbird from a local man that is no longer able to leep up the car. Well, the bad first:

It has sit for four years, some rust but not TOO much, needs new vinyl top, not sure if it runs but I doubt it, needs new tires, battery, etc., ripped driver seat, poorly painted the unoriginal red, window motors don't work

The good:
decent interior condition, no rust throughs that are visible, Thunderjet engine, good trunk condition, body appears in good quality, no window problems, not as intensive as a resto as our 69 Chevy, it's a Thunderbird


Can anyone give me a little bit of a run-through of how to sandblast and prep the car to be repainted? Also, does anyone know what the original yellow color on the '68 T'birds looked like? Yellow was the original color. I'll post some pics.

  Olds79

http://www.cargurus.com/images/2009/01/11/13/59/pic-21296.jpeg
http://www.cargurus.com/images/2009/01/11/14/01/pic-21297.jpeg
http://www.cargurus.com/images/2009/01/11/14/09/pic-21298.jpeg
http://www.cargurus.com/images/2009/01/11/14/11/pic-21299.jpeg

  Olds79

Cool Car!:thumbs:

I would not recommend sandblasting. It is very messy and unless you go with backing soda, the car will need to be nearly completely disassembled. The main advantage of blasting a car is either to remove a lot of rust scale of multiple layers of paint. And it doesn't look as though your car has either. Mechanical (electric sander) would be the best choice.

For a re-paint basically you just need to sand the car down to a layer of paint that still has good adhesion. In some cases you will need to go to the metal, but this is not always necessary. Then repair the rust by cutting it out and welding in new metal. Use filler to smooth out the body to your liking, prime and block sand until you are happy, then spray your color of choice. This of course is a very overly simplified explanation, but.... it should suffice for now.... just let me know if you need more specifics about a certain step.

I did a quick search for the yellow color and found "Meadowlark Yellow" Ford code "W", but I'm not sure if it was a T-Bird color. The best bet would be to just visit your local paint store with the paint code and take a look at their chip book.

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress! :mrgreen:

  corbett_auto