A friend of mine has some wheels on his 63 Chevy wagon that were powder coated black and then the former owner painted over the powder coat with silver paint. How hard would it be to remove the paint with out harming the powder coat ? Any help would be cool .
Don't know a ton about powder coating, I do know its tuff. I've seen some mild forms of aircraft striper, that would eat right through the paint and it might not hurt the powder coat if you rinse it off fast enought. Like rev106 said try it on the back of the wheel first.
Doubtful you'll be able to, wheels have a lot of nooks and crannies to clean out. Powdercoat is good stuff, but not that good.
I agree with Shifty, Just prep,m and paint,m black, or whatever color you want. Im sure the powder coating got sanded before they were painted silver anyway. Why would you want to save sanded powdercoat.
Take a quarter and s****e on one of the wheels (the back would be a good place as long as the wheels were powder coated and painted the same front & back). If the silver paint does not pop off and leave the glossy powder coating underneath, you will unfortunately not be able to remove the silver and save the powder. They were probably prepped some way like Bishop said (like by sanding or chemical roughing). My suggestion would be to have the wheels sandblasted back to bare metal and re-powder coated in the color of your choice. - Jeff
strip em down and repowder. shouldn't be terribly expensive, or do what i did and get a powder kit from Eastwood, it is almost dummy proof to do yourself.
An old trick used to remove truck lettering was to use easy off oven cleaner. It would lift the lettering but leave the base color . Maybe worth a try on the back.