I'm painting my car soon, but the paint on the front bumper cover is cracking off pretty badly. How should I go about gettin all the old paint off? Is there any type of sandblasting bead that won't tear up the plastic? Or is there a chemical that'll strip the paint without eating the plastic? I'm nervous about sanding this, because it's going to be hard to do without sanding the plastic off. Any ideas?

 

MTChevy: I have the same problem. I was going to use my d/a sander and sand off the paint, but my front cover has like 5 coats of paint on it. From the time I have invested in the section I did, I figured it would take about 40 hours per bumper cover to do it that way.

So... (and I see you're in Chicago too), there's a place in Lockport called Stowe's Auto Body that "soda strips" paint using baking soda. You've probably seen their ads in the Auto Trader or their displays at summer car shows. The guy quoted me over the phone $125 to do each bumper. If you've got a car that you can get bumpers cheap for, I'd get a new one. I'm using 91 Formula bumpers which are $650/front and $429/rear for new ones so I'm going to spend the cash & get them stripped.