...and I ran out of consumables - bloody consumables - I use them up so quickly
I figured I might as well start at the front of the car - where I had left off. In a panic before the eviction I sprayed a load of primer over the parts I wanted to protect =>
The multi-coloured nature of this engine bay is rather depressing - some of the primer has held back the surface rust - some not.
Some of the POR15 has failed - flaked - and fallen off. I'll be using a different product (more about that later)
My favourite paint removal method is still the angle grinder and wire brush attachment. It does take time. It might seem to some like a rather aggressive method but it turns out to be quite a gentle way of removing paint. Sand blasting, for example, can bend sheet metal and the more popular "send it to the acid bath place" can cause a whole load of trouble if the acid isn't neutralised properly.
Some people like those 3M clean and strip discs - but phew - what a price they work out to be - and despite what the packet says about not damaging the metal underneath: I call bull **** on that one. I think the 3M clean and strip discs are about as aggressive as the sand paper stripping discs (I use them for fast removal of {too much} welds).
From a cost perspective the angle grinder and wire brush attachment(s) are about as cheap as you can get material-wise. Time-wise it is a chore.
The thing to remember about this kind of preparation is that it is a 3D problem: There is no point in painting one side of a piece of sheet metal if you are then going to strip the other side =>
Heat from paint removal might make your newly coated paintwork on the other side come away and the joins where the sides meet get damaged. Best to strip both sides before you start with the rust treatments and paints.
To remove this old POR15 paint I'm going to help myself along a bit with paint stripper.
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Here we come to another problem (especially in Europe) where paint stripper isn't what it used to be. So far I've been using POR-strip which at least does something some of the time. I've also been using a product called Synstrip which does a slightly better job than the POR-strip.
Both of these products are acid based - so you need to clean them off quickly before they tarnish the metal underneath. The days of "letting it soak in over night" are long gone.
I've heard tell of an alternative to those mentioned above - if it works out I'll let you know,