I have not done anything since mid April except to place a big order with Megazip. A bunch in miscellaneous parts, everything for timing belt and water pump, and seals for my FRP top.
My FRP top has was painted silver snd clear coated at some time. I expect it was all done when painted blue and turned into Good Times. Its finish is in bad shape, peeling in spots, especially in the ridge corners. In some areas, the clear coat, silver, and gel coat have been compromised. As well, it’s clearly gone through some low clearance areas as the top has some gouges that go through the gel coat to the fibreglass. All in all, not too bad as no gouges have compromised the glass fibres.
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I’ve been reading the interweb to find info on paint removal. I decided to try scraping it off with a razor blade. I had mixed results. In certain areas, it came off quite well, others areas, not. This was about 2 to 3 hours worth of scraping.
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I think I’ll try a random orbital sander as I used sandpaper in spots and it removed both the clear and silver quite well. I’ll just need to be careful to not remove too much of the gelcoat. I figure this will be better then chemical stripping and there is a lot of controversy whether chemical stripping is good or bad. Most opinion is it’s bad, as it makes it difficult for paint and gelcoat to stick, in the long run.
The sides and Land Cruiser lettering will be a pain in the ass. I’m going to wait until the seals arrive and then I’ll take off the top and remove the windows to make the stripping easier. I’m going to find someone local to redo the gelcoat. I’ll probably leave it white, although I like the silver.