Red loses some red

[Kenny_Z]

Uhhair's post inspired me. I'm not ready to strip the entire car yet but I am ready to get rid of those horrible red rims. I'm practicing on the front driver side wheel.

This is what I started with. Note the chipping and general ugliness.


This is after the first application of an off the shelf chemical stripper.


The wheel was painted with no primer between the original silver and the red. I think the red was applied with a spray can. I'm going to find a small bottle brush tomorrow to see if I can get some better results. I have the stripper soaking on the paint overnight.

I have a can of silver paint and a detail gun waiting for the stripping to finish.

[Kenny_Z]

My arms are tired. I'm thinking I may look for a soda blaster or some stronger chemical stripper for the next wheel. It took over 5 applications and serious scrubbing to get to this point.



Even then it's not perfect. There's still bits of red paint in hard to reach places. The most effective thing I found was to let the chemical sit on the paint for about 20 minutes and then take the wheel down to a car wash and hit it with the pressure washer for about 5 minutes.

[dvonk]

nice, it looks better without the red paint... keep it up!

[jmettee]

Once step at a time. Looks good!

Could you tell if just the red paint came off or did some of the silver wheel paint come off (I believe the wheels were originally painted as opposed to powder coat).

Justin

[Kenny_Z]

The original paint came off as well. It didn't at first but the chemical stripper made it soft and the pressure washer got most of it. I planned to take it all the way back to the bare metal anyway.

[dvonk]

are you planning to polish the bare metal or are you going to repaint/powder coat?

[Kenny_Z]

Unfortunately the metal is too porous to polish them up. I thought about powder coating but I've got so many other things to do that I can't justify that cost yet. Painting them myself costs me some primer, base coat, and clear. All of which I already have from other projects.

[Michael]

I have had good results with "Aircraft" brand paint remover...stuff is insane and I bet it would waste a single stage spary paint job. Avaliable at Lowes.

If you are on a budget, oven cleaner makes a decent paint stripper too.

[Kenny_Z]

I tried to find that Aircraft stripper but the Lowes around here stopped carrying it. I used it on my Nova a couple of years ago and it was amazing. Unfortunately it also ate through it's container and dried up.

[Kenny_Z]

I tried some of that aerosol stripper I saw Uhhair use on his Delorean's skin. It is great stuff. I accomplished more in 2 hours with it than I did in 8 hours with the other stuff.

First application on the passenger side wheel.


That first application rinsed off after a little scrubbing with a small brass brush.


I did about 3 more applications, basically the entire can. I used a wooden paint stir stick I bought for 6 cents to get in between the spokes.


I'm going to purchase 2 or 3 more cans of that aerosol tomorrow and see if I can knock out the 2 rear wheels this weekend.