Body Paint Removal

[flustorm99]

Fyi, i discovered, completely by accident a way to get old paint of lexan. Not exactly sure what paint it effects as it was a prepainted body. Use the citris base cleaners u would use to get old stickers off things. I was cleaning some very old velcro residue of a shell and some of the cleaner was left on over night, as i went to rub the glue residue off my finger nail scratched the paint and it came of pretty easily. Since then i have tried it as a paint cleaner and it seems to work. You have to make sure u coat it heavily and soak it over night so the paint looks sticky in the morning and it comes straight off...just thought i would mention this as its a safer and non chemical option then brake fluid...

[askbob]

I have a used but nice B4 original body that was painted white. Was wanting to experiment with a flat black paint job on the outside, but needed the inside to be black as well. Scratched off outer paint will show less if the inside is also black.
I've used Super Clean for a lot of years and haven't found anything that can clean better. I filled up a small but deep aluminum pan with Super Clean. Submerged the painted body for approximately 3 hours. The paint practically washed off with water. Just rubbed my finger over the painted surface while running water over it. Not sure what it was painted with, but I'd guess Pactra since that is what's most available.
Not a body really worth taking the time to do this with, but my little project worked!

[Coelacanth]

Fyi, i discovered, completely by accident a way to get old paint of lexan. Not exactly sure what paint it effects as it was a prepainted body.

Unfortunately, this invalidates your entire experiment, because you don't know what paint was on the body. I see lots of people claiming that this or that or the other thing removes paint from Lexan, but many aren't sure what paint was on the Lexan in the first place. I have an old body that has vintage Pactra Lexan RC paint on it, and practically nothing has done an effective job at removing it...short of 80-grit sandpaper, I guess. I took out that old body just now and sprayed on some of that Super Clean in the purple spray bottle...I'll let it sit for a day or two and share the results. I'm hoping it works, of course!

[tamiya]

try the Tamiya purple bottle?

It's been successful on PS even really aged examples and
Traxxas RTR paintjob which is pretty darned fuelproof usually.
It's worked also on some non-PS shades which I think are Pactra
but I didn't paint them myself so can't be sure what it was originally.


It's also great in the sense it doesn't damage paint immediately on contact
so it's great for cleaning up overspray or removing only sections of paint.

Check this out, most impressive job to date...









(gah! now needing z-parts...)

[askbob]

Fyi, i discovered, completely by accident a way to get old paint of lexan. Not exactly sure what paint it effects as it was a prepainted body.

Unfortunately, this invalidates your entire experiment, because you don't know what paint was on the body. I see lots of people claiming that this or that or the other thing removes paint from Lexan, but many aren't sure what paint was on the Lexan in the first place. I have an old body that has vintage Pactra Lexan RC paint on it, and practically nothing has done an effective job at removing it...short of 80-grit sandpaper, I guess. I took out that old body just now and sprayed on some of that Super Clean in the purple spray bottle...I'll let it sit for a day or two and share the results. I'm hoping it works, of course!

Make sure it's the real Super Clean and not purple power or some other brand. You will have to actually submerge the entire painted area for it to work. I tried spraying and letting it sit for a few hours with no results. Full strength totally submerged was the ticket.


Beware though...

[GoMachV]

Yep, don't use aluminum

[askbob]

No doubt!

Luckily I had it sitting in the SS kitchen sink. A nice glass pan would probably be best but from experience Super Clean will also etch glass.

[Coelacanth]

Well, let's put another nail in this coffin and put this to rest. I mentioned previously that I sprayed some of that Super Clean (non-Castrol-branded one) on that old Lexan test body that had vintage red Pactra backed with white, and let it sit. It's now been sitting well over 24 hours. I purposefully had the Super Clean pool up in some areas of the body, it wasn't just a spray-by.

Got out my toothbrush tonight to give the pooled areas a good scrub; it didn't even smudge the white backing coat.

This same "fun test" body has had DOT 3, DOT 4, nitro fuel and a bunch of other cleaners tested on it, and I think less than a third of the paint has come off. Where the paint DID come off, the Lexan is seriously hazed and milky.

Pactra is pretty impossible to remove if it's been sitting for years. If you guys are seeing paint coming off with various procedures, and aren't sure what that paint was--chances are it wasn't Pactra.

[ManMan]

Has anyone tried sandblasting? I'm thinking Very low psi with a fairly aggressive grit.

[snowfox]

Has anyone tried sandblasting? I'm thinking Very low psi with a fairly aggressive grit.

I had 2 cougar chassis that were painted with rattle can paint, I could have stripped it in 5 minutes with Nitro Moors. They were being shipped a guy who was bead blasting a load of parts for me. I asked him if he wanted me to strip the paint from the chassis first, he said no as the bead blasting will strip it.

When returning the parts he told me his shop assistant took about 4 hours trying to strip that paint. So to be honest, I don't think it will work well against a paint on polycarb. Always worth a shot though if you have the kit and something to test on.

[yellowdatsun]

I've used Goof-Off to remove excess paint that bled under the tape in small spots. Comes off ok, but as others have said, the end result is foggy, with a little bit of the wrong paint still there.

[kiohio]

So I added 2s lipo and a 5700kv to the B marked gold pan. Body was pretty nice before with no bad scratches or paint missing from the inside.
Now, back to the CC 5700kv, one trip outside, first hit of the throttle and she's doing a flip a goes upside down on the fresh "brushed" concrete.
So much for "one little run won't hurt the body any, I'll just be easy on the throttle".
So long story short I want to remove the paint and repaint this body.
Can we assume it's normal not lexan specific because it cracked?
If so then the suggestions earlier in the thread should work well correct?
As cracked as it is should I just try picking it off?

Thanks in advance
KO

[klavy69]

Can we assume it's normal not lexan specific because it cracked?
If so then the suggestions earlier in the thread should work well correct?
As cracked as it is should I just try picking it off?

Thanks in advance
KO

Pretty good indication if the paint cracked from this little bit of use it isn't lexan paint but only the original painter really knows. When I've picked at paint I usually end up scratching the crap outta the inside of the body. I can't just do a little so before I know it I have something sharp picking at the paint so after a few hours and a destroyed body I just submerge the whole thing like it mentioned earlier in this post. If the paint isn't lexan paint it will work rather quickly and painlessly so thats the route I go nowadays...

Todd

[kiohio]

Sweet! Thank you very much for info.
I appreciate it!

KO

[Coelacanth]

Paint cracking & flaking could also happen if the original painter didn't first thoroughly clean the body before painting, because the Lexan body molds had a releasing agent so the body could pop off the molds, and that releasing agent is still present on new bodies. That's why they always suggest to wash the body thoroughly with dish soap, or even haze it slightly with an SOS pad.