Where to start on exterior?

[PirateToast]

I'm a noob who got myself into quite the project in this 1985. It's running pretty well, I want to get it looking good on the exterior so it's not such an eyesore. Here's a gallery with some pictures: https://imgur.com/a/h6ETmio

Where would you start on this? What are the steps involved for whatever you recommend I do first?

[erratic50]

To me, the missing trim and badly discolored charcoal trim is what looks the worst.

get the cowl trim from any 83-93 or nos or reproduction. It will have to be resprayed with trim colored to look right.

For what’s there still you can easily prep and repaint the trim — it has to be done anyway for a restore.

From there I would practice my sanding and painting skills on the A pillar and area in front of the T tops. You can go very expensive if you want but the Ace gloss black paint for metal that comes in a paint can and has to be applied single stage with a sprayer is a 99% perfect match for an 85-86 I’ve found. I repainted the bottoms of my doors and my rocker panels, etc, and it was completely impossible to tell with the trim breaking it up

And believe it or not I cut the enamel with thinner and sprayed it in several thin coats with a propels air in a can style touchup sprayer.

the last thing to attack is that dent. It might be improved by a talented paintless dent repair guy but I doubt it.

i would liberally clay bar and degrease the entire car and cut and buff then decide what needs respray eroribg on the side of not doing an area. Obviously the very best and most expensive is to go to the other extreme but now you’re talking redo the entire car. Not needed on car that gets driven to make it presentable! And costs a bundle too! I’m thousands in on my 85 and its not painted yet.

it looks to me like you’ll need to go down to bare metal with a small 50 grit disc then get a tool from Harbor freight to weld on a bunch of pins you can use to pull the worst of it out. Or go beyond pulled then hammer back to try to fine tune it

i couldn’t tell if it was a fender or a quarter panel. Fenders are easily accessed on the back if you remove them the hammer and dolly the dent out

shoot an etch primer on the bare metal then a couple coats of build primer in the area. Block sand it by hand and blend into the existing paint

If you are working with a car that was redone in base coat clear coat you can use blending techniques on the base then clear it so prep the whole panel. If not still prep enough area on the panel with quad aught steel wool as you will need to blend reasonably past your primer edge — just make sure if you buff in the future the paint is thick enough at the blend point that you don’t end up into the primer and try to keep it ridgeless

when you are done pull your tape immediately but be sure to give the car adequate time to cure.