Whats the best way to strip paint. im goign to paint my car, and i got this M3 paint stripping thing, and it pretty much sucks, and wore out fast. any ideas?

 

why are you stripping the car? is it flaking/cracking? is it the OEM paint?

if it is the OE paint and it is not flaking, i wouldn't strip. a good sanding job will yield much better results.

if you wanna strip to the metal use paint stripper on everything but the plastic/urethane parts.

just my 2 cents.

 

so i dont have to strip it to the metal if im going to do a paint job? i didnt know that..... its not the original paint

 

bump

 

i like this stuff

http://www.por15.com/product.asp?productid=188

 

of course i am not an expert, but have had a couple of cars repainted and even painted one myself. the only thing necessary for a good paint job is good adhesion and a smooth surface. the prep work is the hard part, making sure it is sanded and cleaned in all the cracks and crevices. i have never stripped, but all the ones I have done have had the original paint.

are you changing colors? if you are then i would probably strip. if not and the 2nd job is in good shape then I don't see a problem with just going over it again as long as the adhesion is good.

some1 else might wanna chime in here since i am not sure about what to do with the multiple layers of paint.

 

im doing the same color, black, so i probably wont strip.

 

let me ask a buddy of mine who owns a body shop what he thinks about it. i'll post again tonight.

 

Ive heard stripping down to metal is bad, even if I am doing entire car with new primer. What about that?

 

trying to get a hold of the guy. he said he would call me round 8 here in NC so about 5pm your time. I will post and let you guys know.

 

Thanks man!

 

ok here is the deal.

sanding if you are going to sand, there are a couple of things that you wanna keep in mind. the areas that you wanna work the most are the cracks and crevices. if while you are sanding in these areas you don't get any cracking or peeling. that means the aftermarket paint job that you have was done right and you can proceed to sand the rest of the car. if you get any peeling, you probably wanna strip the car. you wanna get good scuffing on the surfaces, since that is what will allow the new paint to stick to the old paint. If you are looking for a nice paint job that will look good, you can go this way.

stripping if you are looking for a show quality paint job, that is going to be flawless. You wanna strip. however, there is a lot of prep work that is involved after the stripping. It would have to be primered, and we aren't talking pepboys primer. it is a high quality primer sealant. If you have a spray gun, you can get ahold of the stuff and spray yourself. Since most of us don't have a spray gun handy, this sounded like a bad idea to me since you would have to strip to the metal and leave it exposed until you got it to the paint shop. It would probably be ok if you were stripping and taking it to the shop very quickly, but not something you wanna let sit around for too long(metal+air+moisture=rust). you could cover it in crappy primer, but that would pretty much have to be sanded away by the shop. This is the way that you get a flawless finish. obviously this is very work intensive, and takes a while. also remember you can't really strip any of the urethane parts of the car (ie front and rear fascias)

personally, I would go with sanding. you would get a good decent job that is gonna look good. you can take your time make sure that everything is well prepped. now of course you can pay someone to do all the prep work for you, but i don't think you would have posted this thread if you were gonna have the body shop do it all. by doing the prep work yourself you can assure two things a) that the paint you have now, is in good enough shape to spray over & b) that the paint that goes on next will have a well prepped body to spray onto. the places that will start peeling first are always the corners and hard to reach areas. most shops don't take the trouble to get those spots well sanded. the shops that do get major $$$$$ for their paint jobs.

hope this helps out.

this is just one paint guys opinion, if anyone else has experience with this kinda stuff please chime in.

 

nothing wrong with stripping to the metal, just like i wrote in the post, you wanna minimize the time between the time you strip and the time you primer/seal.

 

Would you sand down to bare metal, or to stock primer?

 

aircraft paint stripper

wipe it on, wait 30 secs, wipe paint off

 

not even that far, just make sure you get past the clear coat. paint bonds best to paint, the clearcoat is different chemically.

 

Walnut shells.

If you're serious about wanting to strip the car to bare metal then you're allready looking to put big $$ into prep and paint. Give it to a professional stripper and let him blast it.

I suspect you're not trying to do all of that, though. If there's problems with the adhesion of the previous layer of paint then strip off just that layer, plus any problem areas. The more you remove with some sort of 3M disk or sander the more you'll have to fill and re-work to make smooth again.

No matter what, you'll have to sand a lot. Best advice for a budget/DIY paint job would be to go buy a nice random orbital sander and several grits of paper.. Spend money on something other than a palm-type sander or after a half an hour you won't be able to grab anything from all of the vibration. Take off all of the gloss on the paint and any oxidation. Be careful around corners and if you break down to metal, spray some primer on it before you break for the day.

Are you going to try to paint the car? (It's not really that difficult with some practice..)

Good luck.

 

Yeah im gonna paint the car. I know exactly what you mean about not being able to grab anything, and I also understand stripping to the metal = sucks and makes a lot of work if you do it with a 3m grinder. I used my busted up fender as practice, and the grinder scratched the living hell out of the bare metal and i had to sand it all out, it sucked. Thx for the post. And yeah, its really hard to avoid metal on corners I'm finding all this out the hardway, i wish i read the post first

Have you painted a car? if so what compressor/gun/methods did u use?

 

I've painted a couple. Here's a few pics that I kept (The cow bug pics are quite old):

VW Thing
Sand Rail
The cow bug
and a few others.. (Honda accord, a few more sand rails & bugs)

These were all single stage paint where the gloss is "built-in" to the paint. The accord was a 2 stage car and it turned out nice but took a bit more work. It depends on what you're looking to accomplish, how much money you have to spend and what facilities you have access to. These cars were all, if you can believe it, painted in the driveway. You are a slave to the schedule of neighbors cutting the grass, pollen and leaves though. If you live near a military base and know anyone with access, many have paint booths that you can rent for like $150.

What car are you painting and what are your goals? What's the budget? Is this just a street beater that needs a fresh coat of paint? Are you looking for that "deep" shine (multi-stage) or will a good, clean solid color satisfy you (single stage)? You can get metals and some effects in single stage too, so don't let that bug you. What general color are you painting?

After you decide on what process you're after I recomment finding a good paint shop around you, visit them on a slow day and pick their brains. I like Mattos. Tell them you want to look through their paint book and find a color.

As for equipment, I have a 1 HP Craftsman compressor. I've used several spray guns, none of them what you'd consider "prefessional strength." One was a $50 special from Sears. A few were cheapies from Harbor freight. It's less about the features of the gun and more about you being familiar with how it works.

I also never mixed paint with a velocity cup. There were a few humid days when I wish that I did but you can get away with avoiding super-hot and super humid days and just using the Medium reducer. Before you begin spraying the car, spray on a cardboard box or something to get paint moving through it and to adjust the gun.

Actually, you can get good practice by picking up some Fill and Sand primer from the paint store and spraying it. You can learn the process, get a good coat of primer on the car and still be able to sand it down and fix any screw-ups. It won't be as finicky about spraying for your first time either.


Got a little carried away there.. Anyway, feel free to bounce questions off of me.. email's easiest. (dave@newbern.org).

Dave

 

Quick question for all you guys - I painted my first car (Dodge Colt ) orange. My father has an airbrush and all the equipment necessary to paint, not to mention his own machine shop. We wanna repaint a white FC black, and it needs to be shiny... not necessarily competition, but it needs to shine when you wax it if you know what I mean. Is this what you are going for dezerte? I've never tried to paint and get a glossy finish... Couldn't I just get some Meguiers wax and some nice paint and paint over the white?

 

Hopefully his spraygun is larger than an air-brush..

The difference between using a single-stage paint and a multi-stage paint is basically the depth of the shine that you can get. I've painted single stage black before (the spots on the cow bug) and it came out shiny as hell.. just not a "deep" shine. Hell, the VR paint on my R1 is a single-stage I believe.

To paint a multi-stage paint (2 or more key layers involved) you have more control over how "thick" the gloss coat is. In a 2 stage paint the first layer is the base color layer. You spray on a coat or two paint and let it cure. Ideally, you then wetsand this layer of color to make it ultra-smooth. This is referred to as colorsanding.

The second layer is the gloss coat. Because this gets applied as a second layer it makes the finish really glossy, and thick.

If you want a good comparison, get close to a good, clean tractor trailer. They usually paint them with bright, single stage colors. There's plenty of gloss, just there's no clearcoat. That's the difference.

Just so you know, to make a black car look good you have to have every panel straight and clean. You will notice every ding and wave in the car that you never even saw when the car was white. You'll also want to spray down a black primer before the paint.

 

also, the thing with painting a car a completely different color is all the door jams, crooks and crannys have to be painted too. there is nothing more ridiculous than a black car that has red or white door jams and engine compartment. IMO

 

Yeah, thats what I'm going for. I dont want to do a "cheap" job on my own car, and I want to have some clear coats on there to to protect the paint and give it a good shine.

The paint is for my precious Fc3c (s5 vert) and i want it to be a good job. I dont know about budget, whatever it takes for tools and to do a good job (i have access to a shop). NOT A STREETBEATER! IM most likely looking for the multistage job. Im sure it will cost more, but it will be worth it.

 

Got it.. you never know what people really want or what their expectations are. In that case you'll probably wind up spending at least $300-$400 or so for basic paint & liquid supplies.. More if you mix in a perl or fancy paint. Have you thought about swapping in a TII hood? Now'd be the time to do it.

..Dave