If you’re considering repainting your car, truck or other vehicle, you will definitely be thinking about priming the surface of that vehicle prior to painting. But just how do you go about doing this? Of all the many methods available, which automotive paint stripper technique do you use?
Most auto painters will tell you that a car’s original finish is one of the best foundations you can have to apply fresh paint on to – provided it’s not cracked, rusted or damaged in any other way. However, there are not too many project cars out there with undamaged original paint.
Most vehicles in the buy-and-build market probably have who knows how many layers of respray, body filler, rust, welds and other repair jobs under the top coat of paint. This is not the foundation you want for your brand new paint job. Unless you know the complete history of the vehicle, then you’re going to have to strip the layers right back.
There are many automotive paint stripper methods available, and the one you use depends largely on the nature of the job you want to do.
Media Blasting
This is a fascinating procedure to watch, as layers of paint, rust and other unwanted coatings simply vanish under a high-pressure spray. You can choose the medium and the pressure, depending on whether you need a gentler strip, for wood or fiberglass, or a more comprehensive stripping that will cut through rust, body filler and layers of resprayed paint.
This needs to be done carefully though, so as to avoid warping panels.
The type of blasting media you use again depends on the nature of the job at hand. If you don’t anticipate coming across vast tracts of body filler or rust, a softer, non-metal medium such as baking soda is ideal. For extremely rusted panels, or panels that have been thickly body-filled, you will need to blast with a more aggressive medium, such as aluminum oxide.
Chemical Options
These are toxic and destructive and the process must be done by experts at a specialist garage. A full body dip requires your entire vehicle be submerged, often for days at a time.
Hand stripping, using a liquid or paste automobile paint stripper is the more common alternative to media blasting.
Opti-Blast offer solutions to remove paint and primer from automobiles, truck fleets, fork lifts, tractors, golf carts, snowmobiles, wheels and industrial vehicles. Visit www.optiblast.com to find out more.
