Depends on how far you want to go. Completely stripping a car down to the bare shell is a HUGE undertaking. I learned the hard way that if your car is fairly clean, mostly rust free, and still has the original undercoating that doing a full blown resto can deprive you of several years of happy driving (and lots of money!). Remember that everything you strip off has to be re-applied. A rough estimate is that I need 2 gallons of epoxy, 2-3 gallons of filler primer, at least 2 gallons of paint, and a gallon of clear and all the assorted reducers and catalysts on the Charger. Had I left the original undercoating and only stripped down to the factory primer and only on the outside panels I'd have saved about 200-300 hours of labor, 3-4 layers of skin (lots of sanding!), and $700-900 worth of materials. This is the only way to truly know what you really have under there and it also allows you to put all new, better material down. However, I have to believe that most of these cars won't ever be abused like they may have been previously so they'll last a long time even without a full blown restoration. By that I mean they won't sit outside under a tree, get rained on, bake in the sun for years on end, drive though winter salted roads, or go extended periods of time between waxing. In that case a well done partial job should last many, many years. If you plan on driving the car a perfect job won't stay perfect long any way!
If you are stripping the car to bare metal - presumably so you know what you have to start with - then the fenders, doors, hood, and most any other bolt-on part should come off as well as the windshield and rear glass. Rust seems to collect behind trim and in any holes punched in the metal. All of these areas tend to collect dirt and debris which will fly around with the slightest amount of air pressure (like from a paint gun). The fenders, doors, and hood can be hauled to a chemical dipper or media blaster to get inside all the crevices but it's also easier to do the work yourself with them on a bench. The only factor here is time. It takes me as much as 8-12 hours to strip a fender depending on the amount of old paint but I can have all the pieces done by a professional blaster in a few hours. The local guy charges $60 per part for plastic media but I can catch a soda blast outfit about once a month doing a group deal for about $250-400 for a whole car AND there's a paint booth right there to shoot the epoxy. Not bad when you can go from peeling, flaking, rusty to one color in a matter of hours.
Disclaimers: You should neutralize soda with vinegar before doing any more work to the car. If you have any parts blasted with walnut shells then you *must* clean the parts well to remove any oil residue. If you have anything chemically dipped be sure the comapany will bake it so the chemicals will evaporate instead of seeping out 2 days after you get the car painted. If you can find it, get the parts e-coated after dipping and they'll last a very long time. Save yourself some headache and DO NOT sandblast any sheetmetal unless you know exactly what you're doing. Even the 3M disks can heat the metal up enough to warp if you hold them in one place too long. It only takes a matter of seconds for a sandblaster to get the metal that hot but it can take many, many hours to straighten it all out again.
Troy
