Twin Dorito Neato Cheeto Bandito!!! (56k-killer)

[Mighty Mouse]

Seeing as there are no posts yet in the first gen section, I'll start it off by chronicling the "de-orangification" of my 85 GSL, "The Cheeto."

I met this car on Myspace. The owner had two of them that she absolutely had to get rid of ASAP because she was moving. She didn't want to have them hauled off so she decided to give them away to the first rotorhead that showed up. So me and a couple friends drove up to KY on Easter Sunday and picked up both cars. My choice was the 85 GSL. A previous owner at some point had painted this poor car bright orange. And not even a nice metallic orange... the kind of orange that you do circles around at an autocross. Even the radio surround and door panels were bright orange. I probably could have lived with it had they not painted it directly over the factory clearcoat with absolutely no prepwork. So naturally it was chipping off in a lot of places and you could see shiny Dover White underneath. So just for kicks I decided to try out some paint thinner on that coat of orange...









That single stage orange came right off. At least at first. It wasn't until I got past the hood and fenders that I started to realize I was in pretty deep. The paint looked great up front, but aft of the front fenders I started running into areas of bondo covered in non-matching spraypaint.







As you can see by the dates in the pictures, it took me a really long time to finish. I drove around for months in a car that was blotchy half-orange, half-white. Anyone from Knoxville knows the significance of such a awful color scheme. After many grueling hours, stained hands, a few gallons of paint thinner, and dozens of rolls of paper towels, I ended up with a car that was white, at least. It definitely needs a paint job in the worst way, but I still prefer this over the orange. I used a close matching spray paint to temporarily cover up a lot of the bondo.







I still have some orange in the door jambs and a few sneaky places like that. It blows my mind that someone would go so far as to remove panels and interior places and even get the door jambs, but not bother to properly sand and prime the car. But whatever. The Cheeto is still the Cheeto, only now in white cheddar.

[Rotary Supremacist]

Seeing as there are no posts yet in the first gen section, I'll start it off by chronicling the "de-orangification" of my 85 GSL, "The Cheeto."

I met this car on Myspace. The owner had two of them that she absolutely had to get rid of ASAP because she was moving. She didn't want to have them hauled off so she decided to give them away to the first rotorhead that showed up. So me and a couple friends drove up to KY on Easter Sunday and picked up both cars. My choice was the 85 GSL. A previous owner at some point had painted this poor car bright orange. And not even a nice metallic orange... the kind of orange that you do circles around at an autocross. Even the radio surround and door panels were bright orange. I probably could have lived with it had they not painted it directly over the factory clearcoat with absolutely no prepwork. So naturally it was chipping off in a lot of places and you could see shiny Dover White underneath. So just for kicks I decided to try out some paint thinner on that coat of orange...









That single stage orange came right off. At least at first. It wasn't until I got past the hood and fenders that I started to realize I was in pretty deep. The paint looked great up front, but aft of the front fenders I started running into areas of bondo covered in non-matching spraypaint.







As you can see by the dates in the pictures, it took me a really long time to finish. I drove around for months in a car that was blotchy half-orange, half-white. Anyone from Knoxville knows the significance of such a awful color scheme. After many grueling hours, stained hands, a few gallons of paint thinner, and dozens of rolls of paper towels, I ended up with a car that was white, at least. It definitely needs a paint job in the worst way, but I still prefer this over the orange. I used a close matching spray paint to temporarily cover up a lot of the bondo.







I still have some orange in the door jambs and a few sneaky places like that. It blows my mind that someone would go so far as to remove panels and interior places and even get the door jambs, but not bother to properly sand and prime the car. But whatever. The Cheeto is still the Cheeto, only now in white cheddar.