Hi everyone, new to the site. I'm in the wet sanding stages of repainting my 69 rs/ss, my question is ......How would you paint your car? jamb out everything and put it back together and shoot it? Or would you paint it apart and then put it back together? Thanks for all the replies in advance.

I'm no body man and don't play one on TV so be assured there will be other opinions on this. With my current 67 project we jambed out the doors, fenders header & valance & completely painted the underside of the hood & trunk lid off the car & then assembled it. We will be doing the final paint with everything assembled except for the cowl panel & the rear spoiler. Due to the overhang on the rear of the cowl induction hood we decided to do the cowl panel off the car & I obviously want to get the entire trunk lid painted before the spoiler goes on. My main reason for doing it this way rather than painting everything prior to assembly is that I'm sure I'd end up scratching the new paint trying to bolt everything back together. No matter how hard you try or how much protective taping you do you WILL bump something & have to go back to touch it up later. Ask me how I know..Here are a couple pics of my 67 http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg163/nhbandit/untitled-7.jpg
http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg163/nhbandit/untitled-6.jpg

The pros would paint the car in pieces and assemble it. I paint the jams, back tape them and spray the entire car at once. I've found this works well for me, but then I'm not a professional either.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3227/2709092934_ae2ff4da52.jpg?v=0

On mine we sprayed the backs of all the panels with them off the car, then assembled the front end except for the hood and cowl panel, then painted the car with the hood, deck lid, doors and cowl panel hanging, then assembled everything back to the car. The reason we were able to do this was we painted it in a boot for painting tour buses and could do it all in one place at once. Doing it this way was hard though and did require a lot to put it back together and guess what....we nicked it going back together, which we then had to fis so I would suggest what was mentioned before. Paint the jambs, back tape and do it this way, I think I would have rather done it that way if I could do it over. TV makes this look easier in pieces but NOT!!!

Questions; are you doing stripes,do you want a show quality job,how well does the sheet metal line up.

I painted my 69 it has stripes and I painted the whole car with two coats of BC.
Sanded the panels that were getting the stripes then put the tape on for the stripes then took the deck lid spoiler and cal off did the white base and two more coats of clear.Then sanded whole car and then three coats of clear.This was done with the cal off,trunk lid off and spoiler off the trunk lid.I used the foam tape that gives kind of a soft edge.I also split the lower valence and the header and put paint sticks in them so the clear doesn't lay over the panels if it does it will crack.This is about the best I can explain typing.