Projects Cast aluminum stripping

I just acquired an old cast aluminum cal custom air cleaner top. At some point in its life someone painted or powder coated it white. I would like to remove the white and have it back in the raw aluminum finish.

Is there a product or process to do this? My past experience with media blasting leaves the aluminum frosted. I want to be careful and not stain or damage the part as well. Someone told me "oven off" oven cleaner would work, I'm not sure though.

Thanks in advance.

Ryan

 

Oven cleaner is caustic and will stain and damage the part.

I would start with lacquer thinner.

 

If it's powder coated, the easiest method I've found for removing the coating is to heat it until it just starts to surface blister with a propane torch, then hand s****e or wire-brush it off. You'll have to re-polish the piece, but that shouldn't be a big deal...

There's specialty chemical methods for doing this also, but my experience is they are much slower, don't get all of the coating, and are very messy. You can also media blast powder off, but it's another very slow process.

And if it is powdercoat, you'll probably find the metal already blasted as that's the typical prep for coating. I like surface conditioning discs (AKA Scotchbrite) for restoring aluminum for polishing. Start with a blue disc, then switch to gray. Depending on the size of the piece, you'll probably need 3-4 of each.

 

Baking soda blast it

 

Ditto, I had my Hemi intake soda blasted and came out like a brand new casting!
It had many coats of black engine paint on it.
KK

 

Soda or walnut shell blasting

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

From experience repairing power coated race car frames, blasting is EXTREMELY slow on a good powder job. Wire brushing just scratches it. Fire is much faster. The heat and s****e method described above is much faster. Best answer so far for powder coat. Eastwood also sells a stripper for powder coated surfaces. Haven't used it myself.

For paint, I've used Easy Off to strip paint and grease from a lot of aluminum thru the years (also works to remove anodizing to polish old pieces), never had a problem except one time it turned the aluminum dark gray. Only did it on one valve cover and the other stayed aluminum color. Polished right off so not a real problem. Easy Off just stains power coating a lighter color. Brake fluid will also strip paint without hurting the aluminum. Do NOT use anything like Castrol Super Clean/Purple Power or any of those, they will damage the aluminum.

I'm redoing one now that is badly pitted, I just used flap sanding wheels on it to get below the pits and repolish it after it's cleaned up.

SPark

 

when we raced modified HOT WHEELS some of the guys stripped the paint off the 1/64th bodies with "easy-off" oven cleaner ? I used gel paint remover [nasty stuff]...

 

Ditzler Air Craft paint remover.

 

that aircraft paint remover will definately work.....use skin/eye protection

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

Easy-Off oven cleaner is good for anodized aluminum, but it's not going to touch paint.

 

Easy Off is a great paint remover for enamel. It’s one of the go tos for model builders. Have used Easy Off to strip enamel for 40 years. Yellow can only.

 

First you have to determine what it is coated with. If its powder coat the stripping method with me different than if its painted.

For example I had a carb that someone painted once, it was beautiful gloss black and they even used the proper primer to make the paint stick to the aluminum. A quick soaking in carb cleaner cure it, the paint peeled off in sheets. But I had some cal custom rocker covers that were powder coated, I eventually bead blasted them, it took a while and perhaps the heating method would have been faster, but I didn't think of it. They were nothing to polish once I got the powder coating off of them actually. About an hour each on the polishing wheel with different co****ness of polishing compound.

 

Lots of good information! Thanks for all the replies, I'll take some time to digest it all and make a decision.

Thanks again,

Ryan

 

I have had good luck with good old paint and epoxy stripper from the hardware store. I tripped these factory gold powder coated TransAm wheels with it and did no damage at all, stripped the coating with ease. Try little corner of your scoop and see if it works for you.

 

All these guys talking about small cars reminded me of my youth. When we wanted to strip the paint off a model car body without doing harm, we soaked it in brake fluid. I'd guess that soaking your painted aluminum part would remove the paint and not harm any of the aluminum surface. Wash well with dish soap when done.

 

Brake fluid, Purple Power, and oven cleaner are all super ways to strip paint from styrene plastic models. Clean sweep and zero harm to the plastic. I prefer Purple Power; cheaper and seems faster to me.

 

Purple Power is known to dissolve aluminum. Works great if on and in plastic but not recommended on aluminum.
SPark

 

yes, I washed down a 200R4 case with Purple Power and it worked fine. Unfortunately I left a little of it in the pump cavity and it ate it up big time! As I mentioned I used paint stripper to clean the powder coating off my Pontiac TA wheels and it worked great, did no damage tot he aluminum but I washed it off thoroughly immediately after the coating was removed.

 

Well I pucrchased a gravity fed gun and media from the cheap tool store, and 4 hours later had it stripped. I'm happy with the result, thanks again for all the feed back. Here is a pic with it half done.

 

It is always a successful project when you net out a new tool!!!!