Removing 40 year old paint

[zgeezer]

I bought a Harbor Freight large pressure blaster with deadman nozzle and used 30 grit dry sand from Home Depot.  Blows sand all over kingdom come and then some.  But, it removes bondo and leaves the body with a clean surface ready for primer... after body work of course.  It does take time and sand will be in every crevice.  But, other than time, the cost was less than $200.00.

 

g

[morbias]

Why not just use strip discs on an angle grinder? Removes paint, filler and surface rust in seconds and scuffs the metal ready for paint. You could probably do the whole car with 8-10 discs.

 

[estrada42]

I started with strip disc's. A few problems, not the grinders fault. 

 

1.) Slow. It took about 45 minutes to really get the half the roof done. The discs take a bit of downward force to really bite in and the actual contact area is about as big as a 50 cent piece. At least on mine it was. I got more done with 3 hours of gel and scrapping than I did with a week of grindering.

 

2.) Dust. All that paint and primer (In my case primer paint primer paint) turns into dust and covers everything in your workspace. I'll be dusting camping gear off for months. Even with a good dust mask I was picking blue snot out of my nose for a couple of days. (The top coat was blue). 

 

3.) Vibrations. Maybe it's my grinder, maybe there's ways to combat it, but after a half an hour of grindering my hands would go numb. I'm sure some gel filled gloves would have made it easier.

 

4.) Tight spaces. The gel is much better at getting in crevices like between the windshield and rain guards.

 

For disc count, I went through 4 4.5 inch disc's doing both rear quaterpanels and half the roof. I suspect the hood, fenders and doors would probably take the count up to 12-15 disc's.