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Jun 29, 2019 15:05:42 GMT
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Yeah, plan currently is to attack it with paint stripper to remove the bulk, then sand it flat and paint as normal.
On the plus side, it's a small car so it shouldn't take massively long!
The doors and engine cover will just be spot repaired as needed then painted. They've not been painted before, so are pretty flat at least. They've all faded to totally different colours (the gel coat has actually bleached, so not just a case of polishing!) so do need painting. Especially as the stock finish is "poor" at the most generous.
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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Jun 29, 2019 16:54:08 GMT
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I reckon bright Orange or red would look good.......  |
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Jun 29, 2019 17:28:59 GMT
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I reckon bright Orange or red would look good....... With a “Retarded timing ECU” sticker on the window.... Totally un PC 😂😂😂 |
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We've got family staying at the moment and I'm designated taxi driver so my car time is generally going to be quite sketchy over this coming week until next Tuesday. Not that my time in the garage is ever exactly reliable at the best of times. Today I had a brief quiet half hour though and I had a nice plan in place for what I wanted to do. Paint stripper test. Further to what a few folks have said regarding "just paint over it," I'm afraid that really isn't an option. This is what the finish is like in several places. There's just no way you'll ever get it smooth - and those bubbles are going to cause more trouble as time goes on.   That paint needs to go. There was some questions over whether paint stripper would dissolve the surface of the fibreglass as well as the paint...I was 90% sure it would be fine, but obviously wanted to be sure before slathering the car in it. Conveniently there's one bit of the body which is both easily accessed and well hidden - under the engine cover. So let's throw a bit at it there and see what happens.  Results were good. It didn't seem to show any interest in attacking either the resin I'd applied or the gel coat on the fibreglass, excellent. Yes that whole area needs to be rebuilt, but that's a fair ways down the to do list. Encouraged by this, we slapped a bit of it over the top of the rear quarter. These are very important areas in terms of paint finish as the sort of vestigial tail fins are so integral to the styling of the car.  Then attacked it with a stiff brush.  Pretty quickly the top coat started to come apart, revealing biblical amounts of high build primer.  Which also came off without any particular effort, revealing the gel coat below.  As predicted there's a lot of crazing and ancient repairs present, hence why the car has been painted in the first place. Interesting to see how much the removal of the paint has improved the definition of the line along the top of the "fin" compared to beforehand...not surprising how many layers there were.  Other side was treated to the same routine.    I think this is definitely the right approach based on these findings and the faffing about I've already wasted time on. I've far more chance of getting a halfway decent finish if I get rid of the existing paint first. Obviously I'll need to rework a few repairs first and then actually need to properly paint it all at the end of the day...how good a finish I'll get will be entirely down to my prep and my work. Reckon this will be an easier road than trying to get anything to sit flat over what's already on there. Will pull the engine cover and tail lights off next and try to get the rear moulding stripped back tomorrow or shortly. At least then I should hopefully be able to see what I'm working with. Might actually have a shot at getting her looking halfway reasonable by the time the Festival of the Unexceptional rolls round... Maybe... |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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Top work 😎
I think you are going about it the right way,getting the paint off first.
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wc
Part of things
Posts: 45
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I agree that removing all the paint is the right way to go. I used to do a lot of repairs to fibreglass stuff (bike fairings, beach buggies, kit cars etc) and used paint remover where items had been painted with oil/acrylic/PVA etc..... Getting down to the natural base is essential or repairs/decent paint do not stick properly. Unfortunately people tend to paint fibreglass items with any type of paint they lay their hands on, most do not work ideally with fibreglass.
After using paint remover, you really need to super clean the surface, especially as you have crazy cracking as the remover will get into the tiny cracks and will affect any paint applied afterwards if not completely removed. Also, be careful to make sure the fibreglass is totally dry as water will also permeate the cracking and stuff up paint applied over it. Heat up the fibreglass after washing/put in sunlight etc.
I would firstly paint the fibreglass with a barrier coat after removing all the paint and doing any fibreglass repairs (like grumpy has used on the corsair), then use a high build spray primer/filler if necessary to correct sanding marks, hollows etc then put a topcoat on this once you have finished working it smooth. When working the filler/primer, do not sand through the barrier coat.
don't get too itchy...  |
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Thanks for that, nice step by step instructions which are useful for those of us who have little experience working with these materials. Getting the impression that there are two types of paint on this car: the stuff which will come right off and that which is utterly immovable. I think I'll just go round the car getting the easier stuff off then will have a look what's left. Again today I didn't really have much time to play with but was determined to make at least some headway. So played automotive Tetris so I could get the Invacar actually out of the garage and see what I was doing. Set about slathering things with paint stripper again.     Then ensued a good amount of waiting patiently followed by scrubbing and scraping. Finally the pressure washer was employed to get rid of the residue so I could see what I was left with.     I need to pick up a better paint scraper, this one is so blunt as to be essentially useless. Think I need to be a bit more patient too to just see if it will slowly eat through the sections which have refused to budge so far. Nice to see the roof to bulkhead seal showing through again...feels like we are seeing progress though. I'd really like to get a couple of hours in a stretch where I could just leave the stripper to work and hopefully get a couple of panels properly cleared. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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eternaloptimist
Posted a lot
Too many projects, not enough time or space...
Posts: 2,578
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Back in the day, I used to cover freshly applied paint stripper with cling film to stop the solvent evaporating. That was when you could get Weapons grade Nitromors, don’t know if clingfilm would help with the current stuff.
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XC70, VW split screen crew cab, Standard Ten
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Back in the day, I used to cover freshly applied paint stripper with cling film to stop the solvent evaporating. That was when you could get Weapons grade Nitromors, don’t know if clingfilm would help with the current stuff. Not a bad shout that...for the cost of a few bits of cling film it's got to be worth a try. It's really interesting to see how different the paint behaves in different areas when you'd really expect it to all be the same. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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I was going to suggest using garbage bags, especially if its the gelatinous type of stripper.
Holds the vapours in and when you peel it off, it takes a fair bit of the paint with it.
Turn the bag inside out and its already binned!
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Ivd been using cling film just the cheapest value stuff which certainly made the stripper work better.
If the gel coat is really bad one option is to tissue the whole thing follwed by high build to smooth it out.
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eternaloptimist
Posted a lot
Too many projects, not enough time or space...
Posts: 2,578
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.....Turn the bag inside out and its already binned! Genius! |
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XC70, VW split screen crew cab, Standard Ten
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The gel coat actually doesn't look too bad for the most part (relatively speaking!), certainly better than the paint over it for the most part at least...
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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Decided to investigate whether the old cling film over paint stripper trick could help us shift any of the stubborn paint on the Invacar. While not entirely successful, it was a worthy experiment. Using the cling film didn't seem to make a huge difference. We did get a bit more paint off the rear moulding though. It's a tricky balance with the scraper... there's about a 3% difference between the pressure needed to shift the paint and needed to dig into the gel coat, which is annoying.     Did a little experiment later in the day with leaving the stripper on one of the really stubborn areas for a bit longer. The results were... annoying. Turns out that if you leave this stuff long enough it will attack the gel coat.  In spite of that though the paint ain't any more interested in moving than it was before. This is going to come down to a sharp scraper and patience it looks like. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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good grief... how many layers of paint is there on it??
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'80 s1 924 turbo..hibernating
'80 golf gli cabriolet...doing impression of a skip
'97 pug 106 commuter...continuing cheapness making me smile!
firm believer in the k.i.s.s and f.i.s.h principles.
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I usually leave it overnight under the cling film, sounds like you might not have much car left if you try that though!
On the Lotus I have found a slightly blunted wood chisel will scrape multiple layers off without the need for strippers.
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If the paint is impervious to stripper it can probably be left on and just flatted smooth. If it's that well bonded it's safe to leave.
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Are you sure it's paint and not gel coat as some one may of painted it before you owned it and the paint in the areas you are working on may of come off?
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Are you sure it's paint and not gel coat as some one may of painted it before you owned it and the paint in the areas you are working on may of come off? If the paint is impervious to stripper it can probably be left on and just flatted smooth. If it's that well bonded it's safe to leave. Definitely paint, there's primer under it too, and the gel coat is a lot lighter in colour. The only issue with leaving it is that it's massively thick (brushed on possibly?) so there's a heck of a lot of flatting going to be involved! It's also not all well adhered and impermeable...there seem to be as many as four different types of visually identical but different paints on some panels - not even mentioning some of the stuff I've thrown at it just to make things presentable in the short term. So it's not as though I can just say "I'll leave that panel alone and just flat it back for repainting...as until I've started trying to strip it I've no way of telling what's easily removable and what's capable of withstanding nuclear assault. good grief... how many layers of paint is there on it?? I think seven is the most I've counted so far. |
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Last Edit: Jul 5, 2019 18:03:13 GMT by Zelandeth
Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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This paint removal process I think is just going to be a long slog. Got a few better scrapers today and they're precisely zero help. With the sharper blades they're just digging in and going straight through the paint and the gel coat, it's just too soft. On a few of the larger flatter panels where there's a nice clean edge to the paint as it's been removed, using the blunt edge it's possible to work away at it...but I was successfully doing that with my old blunt scraper already. Heat lifts the gel coat before the paint too, as I did poke it with the heat gun just to eliminate it as a potentially helpful tool. I did bust the sander out again today just to see if I could flat back the area below the rear window where the surface was damaged by the paint stripper. Looks like there's plenty of thickness to the gel coat to sort that out at least.  There's quite a bit of pitting on the one panel...you can clearly see the line where the paint stripper was sitting the longest...  No huge issue, it's nothing a really tiny amount of filler can't hide...just annoying to have made more work. Next stop will be investigating soda blasting. Either getting the kit to do it myself or getting someone in to do it. |
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.
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