Project 21 - Restore Painted DeLorean to Stainless Steel (#2)

This car belongs to Bryan Pearce of Pearce Design. This is the very first DeLorean to have installed the stainless steel Permaframe. PJ Grady Europe conducted the transformation from a red painted DeLorean to stainless steel DeLorean.

Bryan also owns another DeLorean with a stainless steel finish - so this car will look just like her sister!

With a painted DeLorean, you never quite know what you are going to get when you remove the paint. This project was quite daunting in terms of how little time we had available to spend on her - and in terms of what we may find under the paint.

The left front fender was kindly removed from the car prior to us undertaking the paint removal.

The fender had moderate damage to the front section which did not take too long to repair.

Once this panel was fixed and stripped it was time for the driver’s door!

After removal of the paint, we found that the door only had moderate damage on the lower section of the door. It did have minor imperfections on the upper and mid half however these were minor and with a sigh of relief it was time to move onto the rear quarter and the completion of the driver’s side.

Notice the difference between the refreshed stock stainless on the driver’s door to the damaged left front fender.

At this point, the car really was starting to show the look of a normal production DeLorean!

After completion of the driver’s side it was time to move onto the rear side and the passenger side door.

As can be seen in the picture above, the stainless steel has severe orbital sander marks in the door. This proved to be a real pain as the marks were deep and took time to sand out. The passenger side was certainly in worse condition than the driver’s side.

Dents were quite noticeable on this panel, as can be seen in the picture above.

It’s not a surprise that the car was painted. However, PJ Grady Europe has dealt with many horror stories around painted DeLoreans, and in comparison, this car was in very good condition. It appears that the previous owners had decided that a red DeLorean would look better – and decided to go with the idea. The cost of the paint job would have been far higher than the cost of straightening out the stainless dents and dings.

Here is a picture of the passenger side of the car taking shape. Although the worst was yet to come in terms of stripping of paint and removal of dents.

Notice the orbital sander marks in the door are now gone and the dent located on the top of the door has been completely removed.

The hood was a major concern for all of us, as in removing the paint we had to be very careful not to make the dreaded ‘X’ pattern stand out!

In the picture above, you can see the stripping process taking place.

In this picture you can still see the orbital sander marks. Half the hood is almost finished, although lots of time and effort is still needed to bring this panel back to stock.

This picture shows the finished hood. Now all that’s left is the right front fender - which had massive damage!

Typical - as soon as you think that the project is nearly complete, the last hurdle always seems to be the biggest!

The car is now finished although (although we don't have a final picture yet). We may well undertake further work with Bryan to get the car absolutely perfect.

She now joins the fleet as a stock finished stainless steel DeLorean ready to woo onlookers as she drives by.

Our thanks to Bryan Pearce for allowing us to work on his car – and for not getting too ‘twitchy’ once the paint stripper came out!