Best method to strip paint?

destrux

Active Member
May 19, 2010
1,183
10
38
PA
Yeah, every time I took a car to bare metal I had problems with it later. I'm no professional body shop though. I hate body work.

My car was flaking and peeling all over, I just sanded the last poorly prepped coat off the body of the car with 120 grit on a DA, except the bumpers. They were cracked and needed to be stripped bare to fix the cracks and fill some big battle scars. I tried SEM flexible bumper stripper... but it's expensive and you need 1 can per bumper, per coat of paint being removed judging by my experience with it. If the paint is more than one coat thick it'll cost you a fortune. I had 7 coats on mine on top of the factory paint. I tried the paint stripper walmart sells that says "not for plastics" and it worked, but swelled the bumper (it unswelled as it dried). I only did a small 1ft section of the front bumper with it, it still took a whole quart can and multiple applications to get through all those coats. Ended up DA sanding with 80 grit, then 120, then 220, then hand sanding with 400. The sanding worked much faster.
 

supramk3speed

New Member
Dec 4, 2008
305
0
0
Texas
Not in your case, sanding the pre-existing paint in order for new paint to stick is insanely easier. You can cause a lot of problems when stripping and you could also find out you have a ton of dents that have been filled. If you don't know how to do body work, you will want to stay away from trying it yourself especially with black. Black shows everything.

---------- Post added at 08:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:22 PM ----------

Also if you decide on stripping to bear metal you want to spray sealer before you prime. If you don't put down sealer the primer won't stick, for long. Also, if you bring the bumpers to bare plastic you will want to spray adhesion promoter for the same reasons. I had a few bare plastic spots and i still shot adhesion promoter just to be safe, once again i would not strip the bumpers to bare plastic.