"safe" strippers

[plum500]

Do these work? Is there any particular brand? I know 3M makes the "Safest Stripper" stuff, but not sure what else is out there, or if I will just end up frustrated and getting a full on stripper, or sanding.

Here's another link I found: http://www.m-tc.com/efs2500_home.htm

Any help greatly appreciated....

[70plumrt]

i've never had any luck with chemical strippers

although it looks easy, it would usually only take off the top coat of a repaint
comes off easy from the plane beacause it's aluminum

[beenaround]

my experience has been that your standard hardware  store stripper will remove any repaint done on the car.but it will not touch the factory paint or primer.now when you evaluate the body of your car you need  to figure out how far you are going to go.ie,driver,concours,or what ever!.when i redid the wife's 71 i used a hutchins sander to remove the previous repaints.i was able to sand down to the factory primer one layer at at time.at the end of it all the car still has 75% of the oridgenal primer on it.

[plum500]

..cool...thanks for the feedback... yeah, I expect I have a lot of sanding hours in front of me. There's the original plum, red, and then another (slightly off) plum....

[Drop Top]

Beenaround has the right idea. Theres not a thing wrong with the way he did it. It was the cheapest way of doing it for him and the most effective. He is also correct in leaving as much of the stock primer on the car as possable. Its hard to beat the original primer.

Allot of times with this many repaints on a car. You can almost bet that at least one of those jobs is from one of those cheap in and out places. These places are known for bad paint or bad prep. Usually both. This is only one of the reasons we like to strip the old paint off.

Hears something you might try. I'm doing i right now on a 66 elco that I picked up for my shop truck. The paint was a base/clear job. It didn't look too bad from 15 ft. But it was showing it age and was bubbling up. I started with pressure washing it and it started to peel off. The next day I let it set out in the direct sun all day 110+. That evening I pulled it in the shop and a friend of mine and I took a razor blade to it, within an hour we had it over half way striped. I need to take off all the chrome trim and mirrors now before I finish the job. But, I'm now down to the original paint. I'm going to use that for my base.

[jaak]

I've used chemical strippers b4 and had good luck with them, the key is it takes more than one application. For example my charger is originally yellow, on top of that red primer and red paint, then a orange repaint on top of the red, generally it took three applications on each part to get to bare metal, so far my unibody (roof, quarters etc.) have been stripped, one door,valance, and deck lid. I still like one door, and the hood. I would definately recommend, if your on a budget, cause sandblasting is expensive and dipping a car is for the rich folks, just takes some time. i think I've went through 3 to 4 gallons of it already @ around 25 bucks a gallon. On smaller parts like my hood hinges, front valance, etc. I carried them to work with me and soak them down (with stripper) on my lunch hour, let them set about 20 minutes, and used our pressure washer there cause it had a lot of psi and a kerosene burner on it (one of them big commercial deals) so all that pressure with the steaming hot water made short work of stripping them parts, I wished I could of done my whole car that way, It would have been quicker :-)     Anyways good luck on your project.

PS-- if you decide to go this route, be sure to wear thick gloves, old jeans, and maybe even and old long sleeved shirt, you'll know when it comes in contact with your skin because it burns like a b!tch, lol.

[plum500]

Hehe... ya, think I'm gonna go with 3M discs and razor blades...gonna take a week off work me thinks

[Drop Top]

If the paint is stuck really good. Razor blades don't always work. In that case you may want to use a D/A sander, like beenaround suggested above. If you want to remove it fast. Put the D/A on grind and use 80 grit paper. Be careful when grinding around the edges. Make sure you have the disk grind away from the edges. Not into them. One other problem when removing paint by grinding off, is that you wont always be able to save the original paint or primer.

[plum500]

...ya I was thinking blades for getting down to the nitty gritty and using either paper or a disc for the rough start....

Stuff is really thick. I took the vinyl stripe off the back, and in the process took some paint with it.

DropTop: On a scale of 1 - 10 how important would you say it is...or what it's worth to try and keep the original layer of primer? Guess I just figured the best place to start was to completely take the whole car down to bare metal.

Guess I figured it would be best to find out for sure what lies beneath. Though I know it's all metal. Just had lower rear passenger quarter replaced, but I suspect the lip over the rear driver well has been patched, and possibly some other quick sand and paint jobs... hood in particular....

[Drop Top]

Actually, If you can strip the car down to the original primer. That is the best way. There is no better primer then the origanal primer. The origanal primer is put on with electrolysis. Its held up this long with no problems so why wouldn't it hold up for another 30 years. What kills primer is sunshine and the elements. So as long as its been hiding under all those layers of paint. Theres really no reason to take it off. In most cases the stock primer is much harder to take off then anything else that is on the car. No matter what you use. This is one of the biggest reasons that I prefer Plastic Media Blasting. In most cases using Plastic or Baking Soda. You can remove all the paint and leave the stock primer.

The only reason you need to take off the origanal primer is if there is cancer underneath it. Then its usually off anyway. I have never seen the stock primer hide any problems. Any problems show up as soon as it is blasted with Plastic/Soda. The main reason we strip these cars is to. 1) See what kind of damnage is underneath all the layers of paint. 2) Take off all the layers of paint so the bodylines become more visable and more pronounced. Not to mention that you really don't know what kind of paint is on your car and you don't what any of that paint to fail. The top coat is only as good as what is underneath it all. I have seen many times. Someone using bondo over a layer of paint when in fact after removing all of the top layers. There was no real reasion for it to be there at all.

                Good Luck D/T