PROPHET69

Hey peeps, I decided to test out a few paint strippers on my car today before officially deciding to sand her down. One of the strippers worked so well that I decided to use it instead of sanding. Some time ago, I found out I had about 6 coats of paint on the car so stripping is the better idea anyways.

The stripper peels off the first three coats very quickly and easily, but the fourth coat seems to be some kind of tremclad or anti-rust paint or something. The paint stripper will absolutely not remove this red-ish coat and there are a least two more coats of paint underneath of that. It almost seems like I'll have to waste my time by stripping the first three coats, then sanding the fourth and stripping the last two.


Anyone know if anti-rust paint is suppose to be removed a certain way? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated

ZROLimitRacing

i guess your gonna have to break out the old elbow grease and the sand paper dude lol

TheScaryOne

iTrader: (3)

Yea, if you do a search, tremclad paint jobs are just about indestructible. There was a post about them some time ago. You could try getting out a buffer and put a light sanding wheel on it and burning through the layer, but you'd have to be ultra careful on the plastics so you don't melt them. Good luck.

PROPHET69

lol, well now I know why there's hardly any rust on the damn car. *****, looks like my first body job will be way tougher than the average.

Perhaps this is what i should do then, I decided to get a 160$ pro sander and with a medium grit, it chews through a whole layer in a matter of about 4-6 seconds. So if I get an aggressive grid, maybe I could quickly grind through just the anti-rust layer layer after stripping off the first layers, stop before getting to the bare metal and slab on some more stripping for the last 2 coats.

Ugh, damn this will be messy and complicated, any other suggestions?

PROPHET69

Yeah, about the plastics... I have a decision to make on them. At the exception of the rear bumper, all of them have some sort of very light damage, like the lower fender has a crack, the upper front bumper has a couple scuff that ate part of the plastic and the spoiler has a warp. They all seem repairable but if I can find those parts new or ready to be painted for cheap, maybe that would be preferable than wasting time doing a detailed sanding/repairing on them

TheScaryOne

iTrader: (3)

Well, from everything I've heard, the plastics are really easy to repair, and it'd be much cheaper to prep, repair, and paint yourself than to actually find new ($$$) parts. Especially the front chin spoiler. A good used one usually goes for over $200.

CYARS92

As crazy as it sounds, scrape it with a razor blade. Many high end shops do this to remove many layers of paint.

PROPHET69

I'll post pics of my work so far throughout the week.

I'm using a flat scraper, but don't know if it's the greatest idea, only about 10% of the car is now bare metal after 6 hours of work. Haven't even begun working on the plastic parts. I don't see any scrapes made against the metal, but am worried i'll end up regretting using the scraper at some point. I just don't know what else to use.

Oh, and turns out that the tremclad is the last layer, what I was seeing underneath was a layer of filler that covers a small portion of the car, I have no clue why. I have only seen very minute rust spots that were properly taken care of after scraping much of it off.

The fenders seem to have a few bad spots so i thought about looking for aftermarket parts for thme. To my surprise, i noticed one of the websites sell aftermarket fenders for about 80$ each.

Hm, pay 160$ for brand new rust-free aftermarket fenders or...
keep my old ones, spend 4 hours on each one scraping tremclad off, wasting 30$ worth of paint stripper, then remove the old filler and spend more money and time re-filling and preping up for paint. Those new fenders sound pretty f***ing good to me, lol.

PROPHET69

Yeah, I've heard of that, my mom's cousin has millions, lucky bastard farmer had 300 hectars of wood he found out to be very rare, so now, he sends a new muscle car to have done up every year to some pros. He told me they use just as you said, razor blades to chip off the paint to preserve the metal and keep the value of the car up. Apparently it gives off a better paint job but costs an insane amount of cash for the hours of labor.

You'd think that a razor could do more damage on the metal than my flat scraper though.

TheScaryOne

iTrader: (3)

Razors get DULL when you even get near to cutting metal. I worked in a warehouse for a year, and anytime you'd run across a staple with your boxcutter, it was new blade time.

Oh, and on aftermarket fenders: Buyer Beware.
I've heard stories of how much thinner they are than OE, how they fit worse, how they require a bit more work to get on right, and how they might look different from OE. Personally I'd go to a yard and look for a good rust free fender. If it's undamaged and doesn't have anything more than surface rust, that's just as good as OE.

wgripp

iTrader: (1)

You get what you pay for!

CYARS92

That metal is alot tougher than any razor. You won't scratch it that deep. I did a whole car once with 7 blades. If held at the right angle, it takes quite awhile to go dull.

PROPHET69

WWOOOO!! SCORE!! Last night before leaving the storage facility, I completely layered the rear fender with a ton of paint stripper using a chemical spray bottle and when i went in today, about 75% of the tremclad came off. But after removing the paint today, I found something bad that covers that good news 10 times over. From the wheel well to above 2 inches above and a foot long, the damn fender is made out of nothing but really well put together filler being held by a small piece of steel. The job is so damn well done it was impossible to tell. Prob is that rust started getting into it again form the inside. So it wouldn't of lasted much longer. I found other problems today that i'll be posting. I think I may have or will have a problem with the frame

PROPHET69

WWOOOO!! SCORE!! Last night before leaving the storage facility, I completely layered the rear fender with a ton of paint stripper using a chemical spray bottle and when i went in today, about 75% of the tremclad came off. But after removing the paint today, I found something bad that covers that good news 10 times over. From the wheel well to above 2 inches above and a foot long, the damn fender is made out of nothing but really well put together filler being held by a small piece of steel. The job is so damn well done it was impossible to tell. Prob is that rust started getting into it again form the inside. So it wouldn't of lasted much longer. I found other problems today that i'll be posting. I think I may have or will have a problem with the frame