mask or remove

Painting my 88 xj cant decide weather to mask my glass and other items I dont want paint on, or to remove them all which would include the stock rear tire carrier.
Any ideas?

remove all you can.. masking works well but it aint perfect

The glass is easy to take out. I have not tried to put it in yet so I could not tell you how hard that would be. I imagine that it would take 2 peole though.

Take it all off, i did a few months ago, to get the windows back in use a rope and lithium grease to get it back in, u'll need a buddy to help u

Having been painting cars for almost 40 years, I can say that a person that is good at masking can do wonders. Wipe the rubber with lacquer thinner before applying the tape. It makes it stick better. Now, the flip side. On the rear windows of an XJ, they tend to start rusting under the rubber. I would recommend pulling the rear windows and cleaning the area and apply paint. The rear hatch is fiberglass so no such worry there. I would also pull the windshield facia for the same reasons.

old_man said:

Having been painting cars for almost 40 years, I can say that a person that is good at masking can do wonders. Wipe the rubber with lacquer thinner before applying the tape. It makes it stick better. Now, the flip side. On the rear windows of an XJ, they tend to start rusting under the rubber. I would recommend pulling the rear windows and cleaning the area and apply paint. The rear hatch is fiberglass so no such worry there. I would also pull the windshield facia for the same reasons.

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True a good masker can do wonders. But the biggest concern is properly prepping those areas that are right up against mouldings, handles. etc.. If you don't spend more time on the edges with scotch brite and carefully sanding than you probably will on the rest of the vehicle, then you might have adhesion problems on those edges. Look closely at any maaco or similar cheap paint job and you'll see edge paint peeling away because of poor prep.

And all those parts are pretty easy to r&i on the XJ.

my .02

I don’t know how perfect of a paint job you’re going for or what you’re painting with, but when I painted my XJ I masked off the plastic (especially head/taillights) I didn’t want painted and jus tpainted everything else. The windows (glass) will scrape right off with a flat razor blade. I went through about 4 blades and it took about an hour to scrape the windows, but everything looks excellent IMO.

For good paint adhesion around the moldings, take a scrub brush and AJAX and hit around the rubber and molding. Wash it well and let it dry in the sun for a few hours minimum. Heck, I've shot school buses with only the AJAX treatment on the whole thing and the paint sticks very well. It seems to also get any residual silicone or oils.