acid dip

[paulhumphries]

I'm currently paint stripping the rear tub (off the vehicle) of my Land Rover before attempting repairs to the alloy.
Horrible job and taking ages.
What I'm using is Wilkinsons cheapest as it seem just as good as more expensive Nitromors.
I brush on and scrap off the worst of the bubbling paint.
A presssure washer then blasts off the rest.
Of course there is bits left still attached so I'm doing this time after time but slowly I'm getting bare metal and almost finished.
One thing thing that I found works well is the green pan scourers rubbing the remains of the paint (wearing gloves of course) when stripper still wet.

Paul Humphries

[IaininTenbury]

I've had experiences of both soda blasting and dip and stripping. Acid dip is by far the most complete treatment, but of course only suitable for a total strip and rebuild. I had a car where the engine bay had been thickly painted in hammerite and looked quite poor. I'd reccomended the soda blast system for this as the rest of the car was quite good and just the engien bay needed stripping (an awful job by hand). However the engine bay was empty of wiring and engine....
I had a van rear body soda stripped recently, mainly because I couldn't wait the three months for acid dipping (they had a lot of work on there at the time) and was quite happy with it. The remaining rusty bits were easy to sand off to bare steel, and it was as described, very kind to the panels. (Saw a van body last week, that had been shot blasted - not nice).
So each system has its merits in my view.

[youngun]

Its going to be the hard way for me......cant afford an acid dip, or blasting......Bring on me angle grinder and safety specs!

[Bluesman]

Get yourself a slow (controllable) grinder and a semi-stiff backing disc that has 1cm of some foam plus a circle of Velcro glued to it. Then get some 125mm sanding discs with Velcro backing. This way, you don´t grind too hard and create a mess in the metal itself. Work on th emetal with the disc nearly at a zero angle (barely lift the backside) and the machine will do nice work without messsing up and bouncing around.

Suitable discs for sanding to bare metal? 36 (coarse) to 80 (less coarse) grit IF you intend to use a building primer on the metal. Else use nothing more coarse than 80 grit.

If your grinder has controllable speed, control it. I´d say 600-1000 rpm gives you good effect. Higher, and the disc will fly off, and you´ll lose contact with the surface and control over the grinder - it has a massive gyroscopic effect that you do NOT want when twisting and turning in tight spaces like the engine bay.

Cheers /R

Cheers /R

[les]

Thanks for the lead Spag.

[Bluesman]

Oops - sorry for somewhat hijacking the thread

/Richard

[les]

No problem, these threads do drift away sometimes!