My friend picked up a boat fairly cheap, but the paint is pretty faded. Fiberglass hull. Just sand, prime, and paint, or no???

What color is the boat? And what brand? Some brands use better and thicker gelcoat.

You should be able to polish out the faded gelcoat. If it is really bad treat it to a wetsand and polishing to get down to the "good" gelcoat.

Pics?

Early 90's Forester that is red and white.

red main stripe? do you know how many gel coats it originally had?

Make sure you have it clear coated, mine was done in the early 70's, but still looks good today, would cost over $10,000 today to have it done this way.

red on older boats fades real bad. imron(Dupont), deltron(PPG) and awl grip are good fiberglass paints but because they are paint scratch easier than gel which has a thicker color layer which is why clearcoat is important after that and with clear will not fade much.

He got a quote from a body shop today. 1900 bucks to sand, prime, paint, and clear. Kinda hard to justify when the boat was only 3000. :doh:

at that price i'd buff it best I could to get some color back and just live with it. lot's of faded out blue and red boats on my lake. when I bought my boat I only got color below the rub rail so the sun wouldn't get to it.

Just wet-sand the gelcoat and spray with a clearcoat on the sanded surfaces. Make sure you used a dewaxer before you clearcoat the surface. We used to do this with cheap faded boats we traded in at our marina. Worked miracles and lasted for years.

try machine buffing it that will make it look like new if its chalked up if not sand it and clear coat it