proper way to get rid of paint

so i am workin on restorin the jeep, im trying to strip the body to bare metal and paint it. strip the inside and bedliner it. now the body has about 3 layers of paint on it. the original copper, than tan, than white. so i have been using a wire wheel strip the paint. but im sick of getting little pieces of wire wheel in all of my cloths. is there a better way??

my friend has a little high speed pneumatic sander. with these little like 4" sanding pads that just stick on there. its spins real fast. "weeeeeeeeee"

would this be a better solution??

any suggestions...

ps i dont want to use paint stripper. it makes a mess.

 

I used a 6" DA sander with 40 grit paper to take off the 5 layers of paint on my CJ6
Then used a cheap HF pressure blaster.
Here is a picture of the body after the 40 grit.

Here is one of the inside of the body.

 

High quality wire wheels do not shed those little wire needles. and to quote one of the other guys "just sayin"

 

If you have the means, sandblasting is the best method. Otherwise I've found a 5" random orbit sander hooked up to a shop vac. Start with about 60 grit or less and start sanding the paint away. Shop vacumes it up while working. Not much dust and works well.

 

i appreciate the pictures. looks about the same as my job with the wire wheel. i went to national welders and they were selling their wire wheels for 25 bucks. and i can get a cheapo bench grinder wire wheel at home depot for 6 bucks. just wondering if it would be more economical to spend the 25 bucks for one or 25 for 4 crummy ones.....

 

I find a good grit flap disc on the mini grinder does wonders for removing old paint...makes a horrible mess though

 

I used a couple of quarts of heavy duty paint stripper from WalMart. It was about $7-8 a quart. I found it worked a lot better if I scratched the surface of the paint first. I used a 4" angle grinder wi 50 grit paper to scratch the paint then applied the stripper, let it buble the paint and dry, then went over with a wire wheel, then 80 grit on a 5" da.

 

i've used this attached to my angle grinder and it works well. to do the whole rear floor, with 3 coats of paint, it took approximately 4 hours. just have to be extra careful because you'd need to remove the guard and the grinder feels heavier with the bigger wheel (i guess from greater centrifugal force). if you decide to go this route, make sure you also look at the wheel before purchasing. i bought one that was defective where the wires were slightly eccentric: it made the whole angle grinder vibrate in my hands. it's also best to flip the wheel occasionally to change the direction of the wires and have better "bite".

i know you said you don't want to use paint stripper because of the mess...what i did is only used it on larger and easier to access areas, like the top cowl, where it's easier to spread and scrape...thus minimizing mess...

haven't tried doing it myself but sandblasting looks to be the best...

 

well i went to the national welders today about bout an actual angle grinder cup style wire brush with the twisted style bristles. paid 14 bucks for one. and i must say it works pretty good. and it last a hell of a lot longer than the $6 bench grinder wheels. in about an hour of grinding i only lost two bristles!

so i think i might still with this for a while. it'll take me a while cause im doin the whole tub. i got the bottom down already now im workin on the top half.

 

I use a 120 grit flap wheel on my 4 inch angle grinder and it works very well, but it does make a mess. When I stripped the bed liner off the inside of my flatty I found that some heat makes it let loose so it can be scraped off with a putty knife usally in large chunks.

 

I look at it with an evil eye and it jumps off the metal in fear...
That said Aircraft remover i've found works surprisingly well. I wouldn't use a flap wheel, go too deep and you'll grind into the sheet metal underneath, plus they don't conform to nooks and crannies too well

 

I tried the evil eye but it just laughed at me

 

You need to have some music in the background...Gorilla Biscuits, Fu Manchu, Seventh Star, etc

 

does crappy music speed up the process by irritating the paint off?

 

I am on my 5th wire wheel busting the rust on my Jeep. Quality of wheel means nothing when you are running it into tight places to get after the rust, as all wire wheels will be destroyed that way.






Todd:hurrican:

 

These stripping discs are the bees-knees... they have them at Home Depot/Lowes. They aren't sandpaper, more like a very stiff scotch brite pad.


Took the of my 2A to this in about 15 minutes through 4 colors of paint...

 

X2 Works great on an angle grinder, but not so well on my little die grinder where a cheapie HF wire wheel or cup works really well. Also a twisted wire welder's wheel does a quick job too.

 

rember to look at what the speed of the wire brush you are buying is rated at!!! that may explain why you are throwing steel wire out of it. a die grinder runs at about 10000 rpms some more some less. Ive tried it all, paint striper, sand paper, the big scotch brite disk, wire wheel, and sand blasting. the scotch brite work really well on large areas that are easy to get to, sand blasting is the easiest but may not be the cheapist. if you go the sandblasting route do yourself a favor rent the compressor and the blaster. Im talking about a compressor that you pull behind the truck you can have the whole thing blasted in just a few hours frame as well. just do it somewhere away from the house because it puts sand everywhere. another thing that i have found that works well is razorblades if you can get under all that paint it will come right off

 

Sears has a very inexpensive sand blasting system that uses non sand products and it works really well.

Always invest in a hundred foot roll of vis queen plastic.





Todd