Removing engine cover paint?

[Shep]

Evidently my engine cover (the lower one, not the louvers) should not have any paint at all on the bottom half, and instead should be bare white fiberglass (another 500 series thing). I'd like to start getting the materials needed to remove the paint from the bottom half only, but am not entirely sure what the "proper" method for doing this is. I was originally going to use sandpaper in various grits ranging from very coarse to very fine, but someone else mentioned using a chemical remover. I searched around these forums to see how everyone else did it, and looked through all the threads, but came up empty. I found threads where the engine cover was repainted, but reading it sounded like they did not remove the paint, but rather prepped it for another coat. I'm looking to remove every last trace of paint to leave the bare fiberglass. I don't have any labels on the cover (so no adhesive), but the metal grilles are all in place.

I do not have access to a sand blaster, and I'd like to do this one at home. Is sandpaper the right approach, or is there another "preferred" method? I need something to keep me busy this winter, so this will be first on my list of things to do.

Thanks in advance! :)

[Soundkillr]

I would recommend pulling the grills out, and taping that area up really well (so no stripper runs down to the other side of the cover) Then I would get a chemical stripper, and brush it on with a paintbrush. I have used aircraft stripper in the past and it works great. You don't want sand marks in the fiberglass cover, and you don't want to risk pitting from sand blasting. The chemical works best evenly brushed on, and allowed to sit in the sun on a warmer day. Only takes about twenty minutes to remove all traces of paint. Rinse very well with water when done. It's really very easy actually.

[Jimmyvonviggle]

What was the point of it not being painted when it left the factory? Do you you have any more information on this?

Also is chemical stripper safe to use on fiberglass?

[Kenny_Z]

I think they make some that is safe for fiberglass but I'd read the label very carefully.

[DMC5180]

The paint is pretty thin. You might try using acetone and a rags to see if will dissolve the paint. This works well if you want to clean the flat black (rattle can) paint off the under body. Never tried it the engine cover though. The other thing you could do is simply paint it with a color matched (Off white) if you just want the replicated look.

[DMCMW Dave]

The paint is pretty thin. You might try using acetone and a rags to see if will dissolve the paint. This works well if you want to clean the flat black (rattle can) paint off the under body. Never tried it the engine cover though. The other thing you could do is simply paint it with a color matched (Off white) if you just want the replicated look.

On early VIN cars the factory didn't apparently try very hard to paint the bottom, and they are typically white in the center and black overspray around the edges.

[Dangermouse]

When you say "bottom half" do you just mean " the underside"?

[Patrick C]

In the 1981 Owner's Manual, there is a picture of the engine cover up and you can see that it is not painted underneath. I wouldn't think ALL 500 series cars are like this.

[DMCMW Dave]

When you say "bottom half" do you just mean " the underside"?

Yeah - - sorry, I got a bit distracted.

[tjd]

In the 1981 Owner's Manual, there is a picture of the engine cover up and you can see that it is not painted underneath. I wouldn't think ALL 500 series cars are like this.

Agreed, not all 500 series cars have the underside of the engine cover unpainted.

[Nicholas R]

In the 1981 Owner's Manual, there is a picture of the engine cover up and you can see that it is not painted underneath. I wouldn't think ALL 500 series cars are like this.

Interesting; I have to look into this when I get home.

[outatym2001]

I performed a search on a Lotus car forum since the Lotus Elan and Esprit are fiberglass bodied cars.
Here are the links.
My weekend with a (paint) stripper
http://www.lotustalk.com/forums/f3/my-weekend-paint-stripper-120141/

Removing paint from a Lotus Elan +2
http://www.myautoproject.com/removing-paint-from-a-lotus-elan/

Below is only part of what Dave S. Clark wrote. Read the whole thing since it will help with not causing damage to your fiberglass

As the old saying goes, there are many ways to skin a cat. Well, there are four ways to skin a Lotus. You can sand it, either by hand or with a power sander.* But that takes a lot of time (especially by hand) and there is the possibility of damaging the original body lines. If you’re power sanding, there are lots of little curves and tight areas that you won’t be able to reach as well. You can use a paint scraper and just hack away at the paint, but I thought all the hours of listening to a ‘nails on a chalkboard’ sound and decided against it. You can soda blast all the paint off, but the cost was a bit prohibitive for me (about $2500 I was quoted). Or you can use a paint stripper to peel it all off. I chose that route as it was cost effective, wouldn’t take a lifetime and seemed fairly easy.

The downside to using a chemical stripper is the potential to have the chemical eat away at the fiberglass and weaken it. There are fiberglass strippers that will eat paint but are safe on the fiberglass, but they are notorious for taking hours to dissolve the paint. So you have a couple options: buy a water soluble stripper that isn’t necessarily safe on fiberglass and don’t let it eat through all the paint, or buy a fiberglass-specific stripper and wait for it to work. Another downside to stripper is potentially getting moisture in the fiberglass. If water gets into the pores of the glass and it isn’t thoroughly dried before it’s painted, you’ll get bubbles in the paint.

There is a long list of strippers people recommended using, such as 3M Safest Stripper. Unfortunately, where I live, it is not available. I decided to go with the Fiberglass Paint Remover by Klean Strip. It’s a new product and was told it will work quickly on car paint.

The first step is to paint the stripper on with a brush. I just used a regular cheap paintbrush. Load it on thick or else it just dries out and doesn’t eat the paint away. This photo was taken after about eight minutes. My goal here was to remove the green, the random spots of primer and the original blue, leaving just the original grey primer. That way, no moisture will get in the fiberglass and I know the stripper won’t damage it.

After five minutes, take a plastic scraper and test a section to see how far it has worked through. If it dissolved the green and blue, I was ready to scrape away. This was the first panel I did, and I didn’t wait long enough and I didn’t apply it thick enough in the middle, which is why the green is still there.

For most sections of the car, I did two applications of stripper. One to remove the bulk of the paint and a second to clean up all the little bits of blue still left behind. Once you’ve scraped it all away, get a pail of water and a rag and wipe all over the areas you’ve used the stripper. The water neutralizes it so it won’t attack the glass. Then use a clean dry rag to wipe off all the water.

[Citizen]

If it were me and I had an engine cover that wasn't painted on the underside? ....I'd paint it black...early VIN or not. And I surely wouldn't take black paint off it were already there.

I don't mean to rain on anybody's parade or anything, but I'm just sayin' ...

...

[Shep]

Holy crap, two pages of responses already! Wow, didn't expect that much attention.

Okay, to answer a few questions: at the start of production, they didn't really try to paint the underside. As Dave said, it was more overspray from painting the sides than anything. As for why they changed it, I have a theory that the second someone opened the engine cover, they saw a half-assed paint job, and that doesn't reflect well on the quality of the rest of the car. Maybe they thought that's the only part a buyer would see until after the purchase. I suspect they fixed this very soon on in production and painted the entire thing before too long. When they fixed this I honestly cannot answer, but after talking with Tony Swann (who owns three 500 series DeLoreans himself, one being only three VIN's away), he told me that mine was supposed to have a white bottom. The whole "cannibalized" part of its history is the reason why the current engine cover is painted all over and missing labels -- the original engine cover is long gone, and probably got a new paint job in the process.

The reason I want to go back to white is more of a uniqueness thing. I've googled and searched and have yet to come across even a picture of a bare white engine cover. Evidently it is quite rare to have (or at least, to actually see one). I did come across a picture that was of a later VIN with its engine cover underside painted white, and I actually really like the look of it. To me, making my DeLorean as unique as possible within reason sets it apart from the rest. This is also the reason why I'm taking the current leather steering wheel off and putting the new vinyl steering wheel on; it's those extra touches here and there that are "correct" but rare. At DCS 2014, I'll easily be able to tell which one's mine when viewing the rear by doing this. I know not everyone is in favor of making it white, but you can keep yours black, I won't do yours ;)

Back to the removal of the paint: it sounds like chemical stripper is the way to go, so I'll definitely go that method. Thank you all very much for the suggestions, especially Mark for finding that post on the Lotus! Reading the excerpt posted here, he's using Klean Strip's "Fiberglass Paint Remover", which seems to be available in O'Reilly Auto Parts stores, of which there are a few not far from here. I also noticed he said moisture would be an issue for the fiberglass, so I'm now thinking of stripping the paint and then applying a clearcoat to protect everything. I'll do some more searching to see what I can find -- clearcoating bare fiberglass is an unusual job, but I'm sure someone makes a product for it. I'd rather use a clearcoat designed for fiberglass than a generic can of clear spray paint, and doing so may provide additional benefits and protection.

Awesome, now I have very good leads! Thanks everyone! :biggrin:

[tjd]

What leads you to believe that in your cars case the engine cover has been replaced or someone went through the trouble of painting it? Or is the originality or lack their of not your deciding factor to modify it to the unique "correct" unpainted underside?

[DMC5180]

In the 1981 Owner's Manual, there is a picture of the engine cover up and you can see that it is not painted underneath. I wouldn't think ALL 500 series cars are like this.


I was flipping through my owners manual last week and noticed that photo. I figured it was a pre-production car used for documentation and photography. Assuming the VIN 500 would have had OM's provided.
I thought it was kind of ironic when this thread popped up shortly afterward.

[Bill Robertson's Sock Puppet #1]

Why not just paint the underside white?

[Kenny_Z]

I'd rather use a clearcoat designed for fiberglass than a generic can of clear spray paint, and doing so may provide additional benefits and protection.

Try boating stores or websites for a fiberglass specific clear.

[Shep]

What leads you to believe that in your cars case the engine cover has been replaced or someone went through the trouble of painting it? Or is the originality or lack their of not your deciding factor to modify it to the unique "correct" unpainted underside?It's part of the history; it was an unassigned company car that saw very little use, and before long got to the point where any time they needed a part, they took one off of there. The louvers, engine cover, front right wheel/tire, alternator, windshield, HVAC panel, rear glass, ashtray, coolant hoses, steering wheel, binnacle, even the entire passenger door were all taken off and used in other DeLoreans, essentially leaving mine heavily cannibalized. It's truly a wonder that it even survived at all and wasn't parted out. The engine cover also does not have a catch mechanism attached, which it would come with if it were the original engine cover.


Why not just paint the underside white?I thought about it, tossed the idea around in my head, and I did find one other guy that did that (the only such picture I could find), but ultimately I decided not to for two reasons: if the white paint chips off, gets scratched, fades, etc., then it will expose the black paint underneath and will need more work to prep and paint everything. Reason number two: if I'm making it white for originality, I might as well restore it to remove the paint rather than adding more paint, since with my lack of painting experience it will be roughly the same amount of work either way. (I should mention that I am not exactly all that good with spray paint, and large surfaces like the engine cover make inexperience much more noticeable.)


Try boating stores or websites for a fiberglass specific clear.Thanks for the tip! I'm thinking I should find some candidates online and see if I can filter some out based on whether or not I can pick them up in local stores, then go from there.

[sdg3205]

Soda blasting... It's $60/hr over here and you'd need only a fraction of that time. Sounds like the majority are voting for chemicals but why not call someone who specializes in paint? Corvette guys would be great given the fibreglass.

[Nicholas R]

Soda blasting... It's $60/hr over here and you'd need only a fraction of that time. Sounds like the majority are voting for chemicals but why not call someone who specializes in paint? Corvette guys would be great given the fibreglass.

I agree with soda blasting If you can find the capability. My dad is restoring a 60 vette and we had to strip his entire fiberglass tub of paint. We tried chemicals and sand paper, but in the end we had it soda blasted and it turned out better than we could have imagined. Plus, like sdg3205 said, you'll need maybe 10 minutes max.

[Shep]

Soda blasting... It's $60/hr over here and you'd need only a fraction of that time. Sounds like the majority are voting for chemicals but why not call someone who specializes in paint?Because I want to do this one myself. It seems like most of the auto and paint shops in my area are not exactly trustworthy, regardless of Better Business Bureau rating, and out of seven shops I've dealt with, four of them have screwed me over. The only three that haven't are Aamco, my local BP mechanic, and DPI. I'm just not comfortable outsourcing this kind of work when it's something I can easily tackle, regardless of how reputable the shop is. I'd like to keep bad experiences to my daily driver "beater" and not tempt fate with my DeLorean.

[sdg3205]

Because I want to do this one myself. It seems like most of the auto and paint shops in my area are not exactly trustworthy, regardless of Better Business Bureau rating, and out of seven shops I've dealt with, four of them have screwed me over. The only three that haven't are Aamco, my local BP mechanic, and DPI. I'm just not comfortable outsourcing this kind of work when it's something I can easily tackle, regardless of how reputable the shop is. I'd like to keep bad experiences to my daily driver "beater" and not tempt fate with my DeLorean.

Sorry. I meant just ask what their process is, so you can do it yourself!

[Shep]

Sorry. I meant just ask what their process is, so you can do it yourself!I believe they use an air compressor or pneumatic tools of some sort, something which I (in an apparent vast minority) do not have. I've never needed one -- electric and/or hand tools have always worked for what I use them for. It would be nice if I could do that kind of thing myself, but I cannot justify the investment of a compressor at this point.