Peeling Away 32 Years Of AE86 Paint - Juiceboxforyou

Here are a few overdue photos from the first few days we took the 86 up to its new home, where the car still lives, as we begin to wrap up the paint process. This was a scenario I had anticipated since the start of the build, and honestly, I almost felt like this moment would never come. The car had a few lull periods, and I was worried it would never pull out of it. It sat as a bare shell for a little too long, and then we had a string of events that set things back. Thankfully, things came together at the start of 2022, and the progress car ramped up. It finally felt like we were on the home stretch.

The lads got to work on it straight away, trying to tackle the corner of the shell we had put off for essentially the entirety of the build so far. Tio, who owns the body shop, took out his selection of dent-pulling machines made in Japan to try fixing this nasty little kink.

After a few hours of fettling, it started to look a little more promising.

The next night, I moved onto the paint-stripping process. Honestly, this was something I was looking forward to for many years. Dan had started this process back in 2009, but his efforts ground to a halt. The car had sat in a semi-permanent state of sanding since it was nice to finish the job. We spent most of May and June grinding and stripping years of crust.

I was mesmerised by this super intense paint stripper, making tiny popping sounds as it lifted the 3-year-old paint.

While I was melting paint, Jackie tried to make the rear 1/4 straighten out.

How cool is this? Thirty-six years of paint scraping off as we got it down to the bare metal.

An emotional moment. I was going to miss the paint, but happy to see it move onto the next stage.

Hours of scraping and losing years of my life to that 1970s paint stripper.

Eventually, we moved on to sanding whatever else was handed around on the shell.

Jackie made the back end look as good as he could, but this corner piece would return to bite us in a few months.

This was great to see; silver metal exposed after all the years of it doesn’t look very good.

The next few days consisted of working my way around to the other side and stripping; it went on for a few weeks. It’s great to look back at these photos now, as this wasn’t the most pleasurable job, but the little bits of progress kept us going.

The last of the maroon, rust and original paint peeping through.

Silver was a perfect colour for this. I enjoyed the raw metal look.

Peep the amount of fettling and body work the guys had given to this panel. Unfortunately, everything they tried to do just made it weaker. We eventually hacked this out to replace it with a better board.

Sanding off the paint meant finding little bits of rusty surprise in places prone to corrosion on these shells, especially the back panel.

Almost there, the sanding that took most of the summer of 2022 was ending; I’ve blended all this progress in this article much like we did in the video to keep things together. I have hundreds of snaps of this stuff, but it’s probably more exciting than the average blog consumer.

What is it about that raw metal? It looked super good.

The high-pitched sound of this air gun and wheel haunts me!

The most complex parts were around the door, and boot lid shuts, as these were tedious areas; trying to get as much out as possible without taking our hands off was a bit of a task. Eventually, we managed to get everything off; as I mentioned above, I loved the raw silver finish on this.

A job I had fantasised about for over six years. Finally, the crusty paint was gone, and we had finished the job that Dan had started many, many moons ago. How cool is it sitting here? I have spammed the site and the web with pics of the shell for many years in various states. Finally, it didn’t look as bad. There was massive progress and a considerable mood lifer on this thing—more progress pics for people who enjoy these over the coming weeks.