1972 Peugeot 504 Cabriolet Respray

Several of our customers like to leave a car with us to work on in stages with a set budget per month. This is one of them, a 1972 Peugeot 504 Cabriolet. Only 8000 of these were made in right hand drive and there can’t be many left now. This one originally came in for a respray but needs a fair bit of panel repair first. We don’t normally get too involved with significant panel work but we’ve known the owner for many years so made an exception! We are tackling one corner at a time starting with the left hand side which seems to be much worse than the right. We don’t normally It came in without its engine or seats to ease painting of the engine bay and interior.

In most lower areas of the car, when a layer of rusty metal was removed it revealed a rusty layer underneath. This of course had to be cut out too, often revealing yet another rusty layer beneath that. Eventually we would reach good metal and from there all the rusty layers were repaired including the final outer layer which, in places, then received a thin skim of filler to make perfectly smooth.

We have a replacement bonnet! It’s way better than the original which was extremely rusty along the leading edge. This one is green, shiny, covered in small dents but has good shape and will be far easier to sort. We sanded the whole surface, removed any loose rust and laid a thin skim of filler over the dents which was then sanded flat with 80 then 240 grit paper on a flat sander.

Eventually the car was ready for paint but we painted the bonnet and the boot lid separately.

The first coat was isolator which prevents any issues between single stage paint repairs and the two stage primer.

Before adding the base colour we masked off all but the bottom few inches of the car and painted on a thick stone chip protection paint. This went on like a dream and dried to a factory stone chip finish.

Next was base coat. A lovely metallic black.

And then clear coat.

The bonnet and the boot lid were painted separately. The boot lid will be refitted along with all lights, bumpers, door handles etc before the customer takes the car back so that’s the next job. The bonnet will be supplied separately though because it will be easier for the customer to refit the engine without the bonnet fitted.