Hello,

I let a friend of mine talk me into painting my 83 300D by hand with black tractor paint. Not spraying, but brush and roller. He did a neighbors truck like this and it didn't look to bad, so I thought, what the heck, anything is better than how it looks now. Wrong. It looked great the night I did it. Then next day, in the sunlight, it looked like hell. I took it to a body shop and they said I need to sand it or strip it. The original paint was cracked but not pealing. It was probably the clear coat that was cracked, but it showed through to the new paint. duh. So, I decided to start stripping it.

It was going very well and then my friend showed up and started flipping out. He was telling me that stripping it this way was a bad idea because the stripper "comes back to haunt you". Ok, I thought, well, I'll just have to do a really good job of getting it out of all the nooks and crannies. I now have the trunk and the entire passenger side stripped. I think it looks darn good, but he still thinks it's a bad idea. I took off all of the trim so that there is no hidden stripper, but I'm sure there are going to be spots, like the seams, that are harder to reach. I will try though.

I guess after all that, my question is, should I just sand the remaining paint and then get a spray job, or should I strip it and try my best to be sure that all the stripper is gone. By the way, i washed all the panels I stripped with lacquer thinner and then washed with soap and water and dried them.

I'm really not sure what to do. If I do decide to continue stripping, what do I need to look out for? Or, should I just do what he says and sand the rest? Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance for your advice.
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Troy

1983 300D Turbo
1981 240D

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Troy

1983 300D Turbo
1981 240D

If there is a way of getting back to the original paint or a bit lower with out going to bare metal then that would be great - see the last posts in this thread

Calling all paint experts - is this a good idea? "paint and cure", good answers.

I have heard a lot of people saying that there isn't a need to get down to bare metal. I guess, however, if you don't go down to bare metal on the bits where you've used a chemical stripper those could be the bits that come back to haunt you as you may have a combination of old paint and stripper... which won't be good I guess! Perhaps that is what your friend means?

So my (inexperienced) vote would be to sand where ever possible. And if you need to use a chemical stripper wash and wash and wash the surface before applying any paint.

It would much better for you and and your car to not have to take all of the paint off. Can you tell me what paint you used? Maybe I can think of some way of removing the tractor paint without damaging the primer coats on the car. The first coat of paint is called electrocoat and it is filled with heavy metal anticorrosive coatings. Removing will greatly accelerate rusting on your car, and sanding or stripping that coating is quite dangerous.

Can you post pictures of the part of the car that you stripped? if you are getting the tractor paint off w/o disturbing the primer layers, that is probably the best way to go.

The cracking is probably not the clearcoat cracking. It is the tractor paint cracking. Pictures will allow me to confirm this.

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