Projects Best process to remove two layers of paint and use keep the OEM paint as a patina job

I’ve been messing with my 63.5 Falcon lately and the last couple of nights fooling with the paint. Car is a Rangoon Red under brush painted black And a long long ago sprayed Orange. I used oven cleaner on the black a few years ago and was able to get get some black off but the orange seemed to be bonded too well. I had used a razer blade on the top of the rear drivers fender to remove both orange and black but I was seriously damaging the remaining red underneath. Then I said screw it and hit the black with 150 grit then 320 on the orange. Because it’s what I had and wasn’t thinking too far ahead. After I realized the the Red under all that crappy paint might look good acepting all the dings and stuff I hit the quarter with some wax and was surprised at how good it seemed to look. At that point I realized I needed to rethink the process to get rid of the Black and Orange and then maximize the remaining Rangoon Red. So that is the basis of my question. Even with the 320 I proved to myself I could get theough the Orange and leave maybe enough Red to do something with. That said I need some grit advise for those layers and then suggestions for color sanding or polishing the Red to best effect.

 

Just keep sanding

 

After all that hard work why not paint it and make it look really good.

 

@My junk is stuff

uhhhhh….tomorrow is June 1st, NOT April 1st…….nice try though.

Ray

 

Patina is way over rated. Sand it and paint it.

 

Looks like letting it sit out in the rain did pretty good at removing a lot of the black. Ya'all have an acid rain problem in your area?

Lynn

 

Go to thesamba.com and check out some of their threads, especially in the old bus sections. Those guys are serious about restoring/preserving original paint.

You are in for a lot more work than just sanding down and repainting, but as they say, it's only original once!

 

years ago I bought an army truck that was painted white for "winter training" . I sprayed it with purple power for about three days, kept it wet, and with a strong hot water pressure washer it all came off

 

I cant tell which pic is which in the progress, looks like an old bank robber movie when they paint the get away car with water base and drive thru a car wash.

Post up your process when you find one that works. I have a 63 impala thats aqua and has a cheap white respray. I may try the same. Has some rust, tint epoxy primer the same color and shoot as I go.

 

am I the only one wondering why was it brush painted?
Usually stolen cars trying to hide their identity? No? Then orange ? Yes/No ?
Anyway, what are you planning to do to match the old red where you put in new patch panels?

 

At this stage it’s more of an experiment honestly. If I don’t like it I can go all the way to metal. Part of the reasoning is no funds right now. The car was pretty rough lmao. Good stuff on The Samba. Will try someof those tricks when I get back home next week. Plans for the car change daily. Was street then very tempted to take it chumpcar endurance racing in which case I would not want to do any bodywork cept the lower quarters so the OE paint would be cool with some HM stickers on it.

 

I understand wanting to keep it original & all. But I think you need to step back and make serious re appraisal. With the obvious metal work involved, you might be miles ahead just to get the stripper out and move on from there. JMO, always liked those early Falcons.

 

Regarding the "am I the only one wondering why it was brush painted. Stolen?"

No worries here, my Grandfather brush painted his '68 Mustang many, many years ago. Lived in an Old Folks home at the time so money was sparse, and spraying it himself was not an option (no shop or garage) so out came the brush in the parking lot of said home

 

I remember my Grandad brush painting his '49 Desoto in the backyard when him & Gramma came to visit from W.Va. one summer. Beautiful mint green it was. Pretty sure Follansbee Steel donated it....

 

Many years ago my brother bought a used Nova that would be OT here, but it had a cheap white spray job over the original metallic blue. He had it down to the self serve car wash one day and as he hit it with the spray wand the water got in under the paint and started to peel it off. He got pissed off about it, and just thought what the hell, if the paint is that bad he'd just blow it all off, and that's just what he did. He just kept feeding quarters into the machine and kept spraying until all the white was off that he could get, and he came home with a blue car. I can't imagine the reaction that the owner of the car wash must've had when he came in and there was all that white paint everywhere. That crap must've been plugging up the water filters for a long time. Not to give anyone any ideas, but......

 

my son had an OT car that was originally orange, but had a really crappy spray can white over it. We rubbed it with lacquer thinner, the white came off slowly, leaving the orange. But it still needed to be repainted, so we did...it came out nice.

 

Considering it's going to get rust patched, I'm not certain I'd go through all this to save something not worth saving underneath? I did my '63 Falcon and it had little rust in the floors and trunk drops, and was original paint. So I patched things in, and just primered the repairs and left it that way. I figured maybe I'd shoot the repairs to match, but ended up selling the car before I got to that point.
If mine had been worse I'd not have even considered trying to save any old paint. Just too time consuming, and once it's done it's not a good look to me.

 

Use the cheaper dollar store oven cleaner, let it set about 20 seconds and then light scrub it off. use a plastic scraper. it should bubble a bit, but dont let it cook in the sun or dry.
We do this in the vintage bicycle forums to clean house painted bike to the original paint. Some people have better luck than others.
But the cheap oven cleaner seems to just attack the top layer. Once cleaned just wash and buff. Red is one of those colors you may want to do as much house paint cleaning as possible first. then use a 3M hand glaze and it will come back nice and bright.
I see you already are pulling some of the back off, try not to get the oven cleaner on the exposed red.

 

That was me in 1987 in Dallas. Surf green 62 Impala coupe. Started spraying, wound up stripping all the repaint off of it. Kind of odd, wasn't really anything wrong with the original paint, and it wasn't even a color change. Who paints a car the same color just for fun?

 

Got backhome last night and hit the passenger sife roof with a razor blade and realized it was taking both black and orange layers off nice and clean. I had long ago used some oven cleaner on the passenger side with limited success but I bet these two layers came off easy because of that earlier attempt. It looks like they just lightly scuffed the original red and then sprayed the orange over that with no primer. Anyway those layers came up pretty easy. Took about 30 minutes to get that half done that far. I’ll be careful around the edges though. Will see how the other half goes . Had a lot of pulls where I was getting 6-8 inch sections that would just peel and curl right uphad a few foot plus curls so it seems to be going good on the roof.

 

If you can get it all off, and then just blend in the bad spots or areas where you have to do repairs, I say why not? You'll have to strip off that black and orange to repaint it anyway, so really even if you end up repainting the car later on you're not wasting any effort doing it this way. And if you can get some years of use out of it with the old paint mostly intact I think it's a great idea.

If you hit some tough or difficult spots, it probably wouldn't hurt to do the oven cleaner again, even if it's only to soften up the top layers.

 

I believe that you would be correct with this comment.
I recently tried to remove 30 year old paint from chrome shocks. Wire brush / scraping with chiesel would not work, - softened it with (heated) white vinegar for a few days and a week or two later it came off much easier with scraping.

from that last picture, it looks like you may be on to something.........
Keep us updated please !

 

Like someone else mentioned try pressure washer. I took my dad's 85 suburban to carwash self serve and blew the factory paint right off. Well I stopped right away but it was too late

 

New shinny is king*****. And dose not look like a junkyard car.
More crap ya can get off,the better for getting it smooth for some great shinny !

 

Another way to do it is very hot water.
Btw get some 3M hand glaze and it will bring back the red paint to a very nice finish.

 

The best way to do what you want to do is to use an angle grinder and a 80 grit flap disc.
Patina

 

Yes them guys on the samba do take it serious, I just don't like the shiny clear coat over the patina.

 

I don't think you have enough "patina" left to write home about and would be far better off to fix the thing right even if you just put a low buck original color paint job on it.
Add me to that list that washed a crappy paint job off in the car wash. When I traded back for my 48 after it had been gone for about 18 months it had been painted twice with left over paint in the paint shop that belonged to the brother of the guy I traded back for it. Most of that paint came off in the local car wash one night and the owner of the car wash waked up and gruffly told me that he wasn't going to be responsible for me blowing the paint off. I said No problem, do you have 5 bucks worth of quarters and a broom I can sweep it up with when I'm done. He wasn't worried about the mess but worried about getting sued because the paint blew off the truck.

 

These guys have it figured out....Start video at 07: 20....