Patience verses chemicals

[Guest Z/liver]

First time on this forum: I am currently "taking down" the paint, with the help of my older son, to the bare metal, so we can apply a new paint job to his 76' 280Z car. This is proving to be a tremendous amount of work, and patience. We are using a DA sander, via compressed air. I am advised by a friend , who does this kind of work for a living, that this is the way to go. If this is the case, why is it I continually see post on this forum about persons who boast about how fast they have been able to take the old paint , down to metal using chemicals? What are the advantages of using a sander to remove the old paint, if any. Obviously knowing very little about this, I am curious about any opinions, or feedbacks. Thanks' Ken Anderson (aka) Z/liver

[tsumner]

Ken , First off welcome to the board. One of the problems with chemical strippers is making sure you have totaly removed all residue from the assorted cracks and crevices in the body.If this isnt done correctly. after you have repainted it can contaminate the fresh paint and ruin your hard work.

If you arn't going to put a show quality paint job on the car.you really don't need to take the car down to the metal.Take off the paint down to the primer and rebuild the paint from there. If the car has been patched with filler or has rust pits take those areas down to metal.

When I refer to show quality I mean paint jobs costing in the tens of thousands of dollars. You can achieve a very nice finish without all the work needed when trying to attain absolute perfestion. Later,Tom

[Tim240z]

I agree that taking the car down to bare metal is not totally necessary, but is the best way. Using chemicals has some significant drawbacks, one of them being ruining any existing filler work.

I did my entire car manually, except for very small parts that are hard to sand (like inspection hatch with vents). It does take a long time. It took me an entire day to do just the roof. I am going for a PERFECT body/paint though, so depends on what you are after. I also had 6, yes 1,2,3,4,5,6 layers of paint, so I had to.

Be patient, and do yourself a favor, wear a dust mask!

 

Tim

[Metallicar]

I recently finished removing the paint on my car with Aircraft Stripper. I used less than two gallons. It proved to be less messy than If I had sanded the old paint off. You know by now how much dust is created by sanding the paint off never mind existing body filler.

 

I still had to sand the skin of the car when completed, but with the paint chemically removed, it was fast and easy.

 

I also removed the fenders, hood, cowl, and any other part removable fron the car during this process. This way I am assured that I will see what ever stripper had run off the top surface, so I may clean as needed.

 

Removing all the boltable sheet metal components also permitted me to clean every edge of every piece.

 

After rinsing the bare metal off at the end of every day, I sprayed a product called "The Must for Rust" made by Kleen Kutter on the bare metal. It is phosphoric acid based, like naval jelly. It provides a phosphate film to provide rust protection (read the directions).

 

This task proved to be fun. I enjoyed watching the old paint melt off of the car. The phosphoric acid dissolved the surface rust that had existed between the paint and the sheet metal.

 

The car now looks like a Delorean (almost). It does have that film of phosphate on the surface.

 

[t-tom]

I took my z to a media blasting place for 400.00 and a week the car is bare metal and all the rust is gone. Safe (no chemical around your family), easy, cheap and best of all no rust. Email me and I will send you some pictures of the car. t-tom@lycos.com

[Guest 2adz]

I stripped my complete car down to the metal using chemical stripper. In my opinion I would rather remove any old bondo to make sure everything is good under there. It was easier than you would think and far less messy than if I would have used a DA. Once you are done then wash the car down really good and I have seen no problems whatsoever.

There are a couple of pictures on my web site if you want to see how it's turning out.