Stripping lacquer paint.

[Milsteads Garage]

Im in the middle of painting my car and I can assure you, this is no easy task. First, I will start off by telling you how old lacquer paint worked. Lacquer paint is one of the strangest compositions of chemicals I have dealt with. As you apply coats, it will react and bond with the coat underneath. It used to take around a week for the paint to stop reacting and then you could buff. Lacquer reacts very well to buffing. The more you polish, the shinier it would get. Here are the bad parts of a lacquer paint job. Lacquers do not like heat. They are very much known to expand and contract. Too many years of this in a hot climate, it cracks and falls off. If you are in this position and not wanting to pay the money for what shops command for, this means you now have to deal with removing it yourself. If you skip this step which means a scuff and repaint in modern materials, it will react, get gooey and your new paint job is basically tar. So back to removing paint yourself. I will first tell you what DOES NOT work. Paint stripper. Its basically useless on Lacquer. Lacquer laughs at paint stripper, specifically Aircraft brand paint stripper which is supposed to be the best. It’s a huge waste of money. On my car which has been lacquer painted 5 times, it barely managed to remove 2 coats. It does absolutely nothing on a factory finish. Sandblasting is no good either because it creates heat. Lacquer becomes soft and pliable with heat. You will end up with a far worse finish from the grit being imbedded into the paint not to mention any sheet metal warping from the heat and pressure from spraying sandblasting media. Soda blasting is even more useless and messier of a way. The only way Ive found to remove lacquer is to buy 3 supplies. 1) a multi speed 8 inch buffer/sander. I bought mine at harbor freight 12 years ago and it has been used on 30 vehicles. Dont even remember what I paid for it, $39.99 maybe? Next, an 8 inch sanding pad and media discs. I use a 3M hook it system. It works like Velcro. I use 40 grit or rougher. I bought both at a NAPA paint store, 27th ave and Thomas Rd in Phoenix AZ. For safety, I also use a P100 painters mask to shield my self from lead paint dust (well, sometimes). The technique to sanding is to put the machine on the slowest speed possible. The dial usually goes from 1-10, I keep it between 2-3. It takes between 2-3 discs and 30 minutes to 2 hours to strip a panel. Keep an eye on what temperature your panel is. The colder a panel is, the better it sands off. Too fast of speed or too much pressure will cause the paint to heat up which means it get tacky and gooey and will ruin your sanding pads. Lacquer is also very hard on sanding discs so if you sense progress is beginning to slow too much, change the sanding disc. I bought a box of 25 and still have some left afterward. I will also save some discs that I catch before they completely wear out and use them again to rough in body filler because its about on the same level now as an 80 grit piece of sandpaper. If you need links to the materials I use or to add a method you use that works, please add to this thread I created.