How To Strip The Old Paint Off A Car

In any car painting project, the first thing that you must do is strip the car of its old paint. Decide on how much of the car you want to take apart (to strip paint from underlying parts) and how far you will go in stripping the paint. The best paint jobs must have all the old paint stripped and as much as possible all moldings, trim and bumpers removed. There is no need to remove suspension, engine, interior or anything else as these items are easily masked off. If you do the total restoration then you would be stripping the whole car to the shell, but for an external paint job it is not necessary.

Strip the car in whatever means that you want. Chemical strippers will do a nice job, but they require careful washing of the car to remove all residue (not to mention they also make a mess on the floor). Any small amount of stripper left in some corner can ruin a paint job. And besides, chemical strippers are usually smelly and they burn the skin if not handled properly. Just to add, strippers will damage any plastic filler so all filler must be removed and replaced. The alternative is to use abrasives to strip the car. Using a 9 inch sander with 24 or 36 grit papers, sand the car until you see the underlying metal, but do not sand it too much because you might create some deep scratches or vents if you overdo it.

If the paint job was an old lacquer job or you used a lacquer primer, a simple razor blade may be used to remove the top layers. This method will remove some filler as you hit it so you must be careful. Once you hit the metal, use an 80-grit paper to rough up the metal for better paint adhesion. If the filler is over 10 years old, or from an unknown paint job, then it should be removed and replaced. You can either use the 9-inch random orbit sander or a knotted wire brush on a 4-1/2 inch angle grinder. I prefer the wire brush, but the choice is up to you.

There are some more exotic methods if paint removal if you have the finances. Media blasting with Walnut shells or dry ice pellets works well but is not recommended unless you are doing a total strip of the car. NEVER sand blast a car body. The sand acts as a peen (this is how they shot peen rods) and will make body panels look like the ocean in a hurricane. You can also acid dip the car which will remove all rust and paint, but the car must be entirely