My 924 had a very basic paint job from some type of (possibly beautiful) blue to white. The paint is super thin and chipping off revealing the original color. I'm not sure if it's actually paint or old ass plastidip.
Anyway, whats the best way to remove the paint? I'll probably just diy wrap it and add some stickers.
Here's some pics.
I'd probably start with a pressure washer to get the loose paint off and then hit as much of it as possible with a plastic scraper.
Not sure my 1700 psi pressure washer is up to it. It removed some of the paint in the crevices like pictured above.
Maybe a paint stripper, carefully applied? I think if do the stonger pressure washer approach. It looks like it wants to flake off.
With stuff like that, i use a razor blade to scrape all the loose off. Then feather it in with 220 on a palm sander, followed by 320 followed by your favorite color of rustoleum.
Thermo nuclear, aircraft striper and citra strip. Then the spray on rust converter that auto levels, prime, sand to dusterbd13's recommended specs, wash, tack clothe, spray to color, 2k clear, then wet sand and polish/wax.
In reply to captdownshift (Forum Supporter) :
Man, thats a nice paintjob recipe! It didn't involve paper towel or windex!
Wouldn't sanding it hurt the original paint underneath?
In reply to yupididit :
Not any more than the repaint already has.
Sprayed some Goof Off on a small section and the edges of the white paint is curling.
I am going to say it's going to very hard / almost impossible to remove that without damaging the base paint. You might get it off in some areas, but take chunks of the original off in others. Bad paint jobs seem to always have area where they stick really well.
One thing that might work, is try to remove it and leave the damaged areas as "patina". It will likely be a LOT of work though.
Otherwise, sand to level then prime, paint is the likely route.
You of course have almost nothing to loose (but time) by trying.
Is removing this E36 M3ty paint job even necessary if I'm just going to vinyl wrap the car anyway?
Oh, OK, I was thinking you wanted to remove it. I believe vinyl is a lot like a paint job (unless you go with something very busy), it will show any imperfections in the surface, so you will want to remove the chipping paint then smooth the whole thing either by sanding and / or priming and sanding. Very small imperfections like pinholes should not be an issue though.
Hopefully someone with more experience with wraps will chime in.
yupididit said:Wouldn't sanding it hurt the original paint underneath?
How many hours are you willing to put in? If you don't want to damage the pain underneath wet sanding with 1000grit until you see it, then switching to 1500, then 2000 the polish and wash is the answer. Expect several hundred hours of work, but if you want to restore the blue (which I suspect will need clearcoat repair, which was likely the recent for the crappy respray) that would be how to go about it. You'd be set to feather the areas in need of clear coat repair to hit with 2k while doing this during the wetsanding as well.
In reply to aircooled :
It might be a somewhat busy wrap. The car isn't something I'm trying to make look really nice. Hopefully it will be mostly track and car things and not much street things. Except some spirited hill country drives.
So, clarification time:
Do you want to remove the white?
Do you want to save the blue under the white?
Do you want the wrap to look good at closer than 20 feet and slower than 20mph?
Dusterbd13-michael said:So, clarification time:
Do you want to remove the white?
Do you want to save the blue under the white?
Do you want the wrap to look good at closer than 20 feet and slower than 20mph?
At first I wanted to remove it but I'm not patient enough for that.
See above lol
I'm going to go with a somewhat tacky wrap so not really lol
Scrape the loose E36 M3, feather the edge with 220, hose some spray primer or paint on the sanded spots and wrap away. Repeat in a few years
I had a BMW with a crappy white repaint on the roof. I used a a few new razor blades and had all the paint off the roof in 15 minutes. It just curled off the underlying paint. The surface was left nice and smooth. I laid down white vinyl on the roof to make it look better and seal the fiberglass sunroof plug.
I had some success on one car using Easy Off oven cleaner to remove some of a spray paint job over the factory paint. Spray it on and let it sit a bit to soften the paint then pressure wash off and scrape where needed. It didn't get everything off (I only did one application to see what it did) but it didn't seem to harm the factory paint any more than it already was.
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