My experience with paint strippers!

[Dave240]

So I've had some fun removing the paint from my +2 with the help of some paint stripper!




I did a "how-to" blog post that goes into more detail and has some before and after shots.

http://www.myautoproject.com/removing-p ... otus-elan/

It wasn't actually a lot of fun, but it was rewarding watching all that old paint come off!

[Spyder fan]

Hi Dave,
That's an interesting little article. My first thought on reading your post was one of concern at the stripper eating away at the gel coat and I suspect that the blue slurry left on your roof is the result of the stripper eating into the gel coat a little but not too invasive to cause problems later on.

I did a quick google search for fibreglass paint stripper and came up with the following in the UK http://www.ecfibreglasssupplies.co.uk/p-2566-paint-and-varnish-remover.aspx this is intended for fibreglass boats and claims not to harm the gel coat.

There are one or two people on here who mess around with boats as well as elan's so maybe they can shed some more light on this paint stripping method and whether it is really suitable for our cars.

I hope you have found a new way to do this tedious task, let's see what others on here think about it.


Kindest regards

[reb53]

I took all the paint off my car by putting a 12" square piece of cloth on the car, soaking it in thinners, covering with a piece of plastic to prevent evaporation, and leaving it for 10 - 15 minutes.
Scraped the resulting wrinkly mess off with apiece of sharpened Perspex whilst the next piece was softening.
Mind you,if there had been a soda blaster around in those days would have gone with that.

To get the cracks out tried every idea I'd ever read in all the books about fixing fibreglass, ( including Wilkin's Bible).
The thing that worked the best, by far, was something that I've never seen mentioned anywhere else, ( including here).
Using just the front roller of a portable belt sander I found I could "surgically" remove cracks to a nice even depth, without the mayhem of an angle grinder, or the pounds of filler needed to cover its tracks.
Did the whole car, including the entire surface of both doors.
This was over 20 years ago and I've yet to have a crack reappear, i.e. have none, and the roads here aren't all billiard table smooth.

Ralph.

[Matt Elan]

Hi Ralph - having routed out the cracks in the gel coat what did you use to fill them?

[reb53]

Hi Matt,
After getting rid of the cracks put down 1 layer of tissue with polyester resin.
Then,tried different fillers and found some were softer than the glass, so you got a hollow, and some were harder so you got a bump as the original surrounding glass got sanded away quicker.
Don't know if it's still available, or the formulation is the same, but the best was the English product "David's" P something, ( 38 ?).
It seemed to have the same hardness when cured as the original glass so you didn't get the bumps and hollows.
They had another product which was more of a gap filler, and full of chopped strand, but I could never get it to harden off properly so gave up on it.

Ralph.

[elansprint71]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=isopon+p38&tag=googhydr-21&index=aps&hvadid=17221792070&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=280524344939788347&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&ref=pd_sl_51qw1ofmdn_e

[nigelrbfurness]

I've just repaired an extensively crazed shell by scraping the paint of with a slightly blunt 1/2" wood chisel. I resharpened it regularly then took the sharp edge off slightly on a piece of sand paper. If you get the angle right, it is very effective at leaving a good surface and the gel coat intact. I ground out all the cracks before resurfacing with layers of tissue and resin until each repair was slightly proud of the surrounding surface. Shaping was done with P80 grit paper (Oakey green) and a body file where necessary. Any pinholes in the repair were then countersunk with a 3/16" drill bit held in my fingers and filled with either P38 or HB bodysoft filler. If I lost the shape anywhere I found a thin skim of P38 was best for getting accuracy. Any final imperfections were filled with HB Polyester stopper and the whole shell block sanded with P120 grit before spraying with Upol Reface and preparing for paint. Each stage was left for at least a week using the Miles Wilkin's principle of wait-and-see-what-goes-wrong-before-continuing. It had 10 coats of Cellulose applied over two weeks and its now two weeks since that was completed and so far (fingers crossed) no signs of cracks or shrinkage. No repairs appear to be visible through the paint (yet). I will say that the Reface coat did reveal some cracks I'd missed so the process was repeated locally to fix those. I used paint stripper on the underneath of the boot but found it did soften the gel coat which seemed a bit thin in that area, so abandoned it. I retissued any areas where the gelcoat had been attacked.

Hope that's helpful

Nigel Furness