Stripping car for paint, have couple ?'s

[Jon01]

My GN was keyed up pretty bad on New Years Eve, and the insurance company cut me a check to fix it, but I can do some of the work myself like disassembly, stripping old paint, things like that and save some $$.
Question is, what should I use for stripping it? I have a DA and good air compressor, would that be the easiest method? What grit should I use? I plan on taking it down to bare metal since the paint that's on there is two layers thick, and has problems.
The plan is to pull the trim, headlights/taillights, bumpers, fillers in a day, and the next strip the car down for the most part, and then take it straight to the body shop so it doesn't sit around in the moisture outside.
Also, after stripping, is there anything I could apply to the sheetmetal to keep it from flash rusting?
Sorry for the long post, just don't want to mess this up.
Thanks for any input,
Jon

 

[Chuck Leeper]

Stripper?

We use Aircraft stripper. It works fast and will most likely take only 2 applications. We do 1 panel at a time. once the paint is gone 100%, we wipe the surface w/ lac thinner on throw away rags. The surface is then clean and free of stripper. I would let the body /painter folks do the DA work when they do the dings and dents..
The lower panels w/ the rockguard on them should also be stripped. Once the car is painted, the guard can be re-applied.
i would suggest a coat of epoxy based primer on the bare prepped metal. This will prevent rusting and allow for repairs to be made.
Once this is done, the rest is up to you as to how much you spend..

WARNING!! DO NOT use this stripper on the plastic parts such as bumper fillers!!They will melt! There is a plastic stripper for those pieces>>

 

[Jon01]

I was planning on stripping the plastic stuff off of it before I started even taking paint off.
Plastic parts:Spoiler, bumper fillers, grille, headlights/taillights. Anything else?
Will the stripper harm the header panel?
Does it work even at colder temperatures? I'm going to be doing this in my driveway and the highs are in the 20's right now...
Thanks for the response and input!
Jon

 

[zam70]

I'd razor blade the large areas and use chem stripper in the curves corners etc. It's unbelievable how quick you can strip a car with a razor blade.

The cold will slow the chem stripper down but it should still work.

 

[Jon01]

Razor blade? Never heard of this before, please, tell me more...

 

[geno]

Razor blades work on a car with alot of paint on it but you really need to watch out the edges dont dig in and leave deep sratches. When ive used them before id round of the corners with the grinder so it wouldnt dig in. The stripper works good also but if you get any in the cracks you in for trouble. Like Chuck said stipper works good on the large pannels just tape off the door edges along with the trunk lid and gutters to keep it out of the cracks. I think the best way is stripper on the large pannel tappping the cracks and doing the edges with a DA. Also keep it out of the winsheild and back glass areas Just dont try to do large areas in one shot. Do smaller areas and dont try to do the whole roof all in one shot or it will get everywhere. A soft back grinder works great also with 100 grit. Then when your done DA the whole thing with 180 or so. I like to use the self etching primers otherwise you has to use metal prep acid wash to get the primer to bite PPG has a good self etching primer and then use some good primer and not the cheep k36 junk. Just remember the same old rule aplys to paint and primers. You get what you pay for and you will be kicking yourself if you cut courners

 

[PEACHS]

Paint job

I would take the car to a shop that can do the media blast process. Sometimes those chemical strippers can come back to haunt you. Those razor blades can gouge the metal and leave marks. For a beautiful quality paint job your looking at $2500-$3000, but in the long run it will be worth the cost. I have two TRs that will need to be stripped and painted. After seeing my friends car stripped with the media blast plastic pellets the paint job turned out fantastic.
Peachs

 

[geno]

I have to agree with the plastic media its the BEST way, but he is trying to save money I did mine with the striper and a DA and it was a hassle but it turned out fine.. Check out the pictures on my car photo in my sig

 

[Jon01]

I thought about media blasting, but I don't want to deal with the damn sand everywhere, and I'm not able to gut the car to do it right now either.
How do you razor blade a car? Just use it to peel the paint off in layers?
I've got enough from the insurance company to hopefully cover painting it back to better than new. The body is very straight, no dents, a couple minor door dings, and absolutely rust free, so bodywork should be very minimal hopefully.
I don't think that I'll be putting any paint on it, I don't have anyplace warm enough to spray it right now.
Thanks for the help guys!
Jon

 

[geno]

The plastic media is what you would have done and a good place will keep it out of unwanted area,s The guy that does it around here charges $500 to $750 for a car and thats cheap It comes out looking like it just came out of the dies One thing you might want to consider is not stiping it to bare metal. The factory primer is a good base to keep. How much paint is on the car now?
If the paint is checked then i would strip it Razor blades dig in like we were saying..

 

[Jon01]

It has two coats of paint at minimum. I don't know if the factory stuff is still under there or not, there are a couple spots that it's starting to look like it's starting to crack, and honestly, I don't want to worry about it cracking underneath another layer and having to do this again in the near future.
Not going to argue that media stripping is the best route, but it's not really an option right now. If I ever blow the car completely apart, that will be the route I go.
Oh, btw, Gene, what did you use to lower your car? That's exactly the stance I'm going for!
Thanks for all the help!!!
Jon

 

[BEATAV8]

Make sure the body shop is ready to accept the car when you're done stripping it. Otherwise you might get it stripped and the body shop could say "bring it back in two weeks when we're not so busy"
eek!
I waited 2 years to get my car into my best friend's body shop. Finally it's in and we started working on it a few days ago.

We gutted the car and removed everything, all trim, bumpers, fillers, weatherstripping, quarterwindows, even the windshield is coming out to be replaced. The disassembly took 1.5 days, with on average 1.5 guys working on it for that time. Windshield is still in the car. We also put junk wheels and tires on the car to keep any stripper from getting on the nice ones. It looked like it was ready for a demo derby.

We stripped the car yesterday, down to the bare metal. Used aircraft stripper and a razor blade, twice, then wiped it down with lacquer thinner, one panel at a time. It still needs to be DA sanded.

Also spent 6 hours hand wet sanding the bumper fillers down to bare urethane / some OE primer with 400 grit. What a beotch... my fingers are smooth and sore now. Still not done with the rears. The urethane bumper stripper is pretty milp stuff, and only took off the lacquer clearcoat and that was it. Rest has to be done by hand.

Car had 2 coats of paint on it. Factory original light blue and a crap light blue lacquer job which was maybe 7 years old.

The car is in relatively good shape, only minor rust in the driver's side quarter corners and no accidents.

Expecting the bill to be ~$4500, even with me doing a fair share of all this sanding/stripping crap work. But it will be super super straight and very nice. I'd rather pay my best bud $4500 rather than pay some joker the same money to do it. Maybe 2 months or so before it will be all done.

Most shops around don't even want to mess with a quality complete repaint. All they want to do is insurance gravy work. I'm lucky to know someone in the business.