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Jacko Boy

To Strip Or Not To Strip

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just aquired and original ss, the body it came with is tired, quite badly painted but I sort of like it! with some indicators, number plate and rear lights it might come alive!!!

should I strip it or not???? if I decide to to go down the brake fluid road would a rub down and coat over the top suffice?

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if the paint will go flat with some rubbing - do that

then reprime it and repaint it

if the paint has started to flake though, you may have to get it all off.

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quite badly painted but I sort of like it!

I like that look too. Kind of original.

with some indicators, number plate and rear lights it might come alive!!!

That'll definitely give it a lift, especially with a nicely done driver. Can you post some pics ?

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just aquired and original ss, the body it came with is tired, quite badly painted but I sort of like it! with some indicators, number plate and rear lights it might come alive!!!

should I strip it or not???? if I decide to to go down the brake fluid road would a rub down and coat over the top suffice?

Yes, strip it. Use pure Caustic Soda and some water (you can buy Caustic Soda from a general household supplies store for a couple of GBP / USD ). Or Easy Off Oven Cleaner in the YELLOW can. Or TAMIYA BRAND (NO other brand) Lacquer Thinner. All are harmless to the hard white Styrene that the original 1979 Sand Scorcher body is made from.

Usual disclaimer on the Caustic Soda (it's VERY corrosive and thus quite dangerous, so use rubber gloves and add the caustic soda to water, not the other way around, and maximum 30 per cent concentration, and wear eye protection, and watch out for the exothermic reaction - it gets hot when you mix with water so wait for it to cool before applying it to the body shell). Don't put it any metal parts - on the Aluminium parts, they will turn black!

PLEASE post some pictures here, of any or every stage of your paint stripping and repainting and chassis cleaning etc., we would love to see them :) .

Any questions that you have, feel free to ask all you like since there are many knowledgeable people on here.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

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I used modelstrip to fetch 2 coats of paint off a king tiger body. It works really well and is designed specifically for use on plastic. It's not cheap, but I found it a lot more effective than oven cleaner.

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I used modelstrip to fetch 2 coats of paint off a king tiger body. It works really well and is designed specifically for use on plastic. It's not cheap, but I found it a lot more effective than oven cleaner.

Depends on the paint. I used Easy Off heavy duty oven cleaner, and it worked stupidly well. Paint just fell off.

- James

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Hi there,

Can you confirm that the products mentioned above are also suitable for stripping the paint of a Terra Scorcher shell?

I am not sure if the material is the same as that of the King Tiger.

Thanks.

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Hi there,

Can you confirm that the products mentioned above are also suitable for stripping the paint of a Terra Scorcher shell?

I am not sure if the material is the same as that of the King Tiger.

Thanks.

Absolutely Not, according to the majority of members here. The Terra Scorcher is of made of PolyCarbonate according to Tamiya in their 1989 Guide Book. You only use Easy Off Oven Cleaner in the Yellow label, or it's main active ingredient ( Caustic Soda , NaOH , Sodium Hydroxide , that you can buy separately from a household goods store like Wilkinsons in here in England for example) on Styrene body shells.

A very small number of people have in the past reported some success with it used on PolyCarbonate (people call it Lexan but that's a trade name of GE for PolyCarbonate and for all I know Tamiya might be using Bayer brand " Makrolon " or other PolyCarbonates ) but note that a vast majority of people have had their PolyCarbonate bodies crack and go into a thousand pieces and go cloudy and horridly brittle when they have used Caustic Soda on them ;) .

I had an original PolyCarbonate body from the Optima by Kyosho that I stipped the paint from easily by immersing it for some minutes in Glow Fuel ( O'Donnell racing Fuel, 15 per cent NitroMethane ) but I remember also leaving a scrap test piece of PolyCarbonate from the Tamiya Frog with some PS spray paint on it overnight in the same fuel and the plastic ended up warped and soft when I came back to examine it... :blink: The PS paint didn't come off. There are only 2 ways of removing PS paint, Tamiya makes a paint remover in a jar for it, but it works very slowly indeed, or else you can spray on some more PS of any color and then rub and the thinner in it should dissolve the dried on paint underneath. Don't worry about any clouding of the PolyCarbonate due to the etchant in the PolyCabonate-specific paint that was formerly used on the shell (the paint that you strip off) since you can either repaint over the clouding and it should give OK results (but residual traces of the previous paint may still be visible usually) or you can use abrasive sheets of various grades to go over the clouding (use P400 and then P600, P800, P1000) and then repaint and the clouding will magically dissappear along with any trace of the original paint. The problem areas are in the corners. For more valuable shells it's often better to get a new reproduction shell.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

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Absolutely Not, according to the majority of members here. The Terra Scorcher is of made of PolyCarbonate according to Tamiya in their 1989 Guide Book. You only use Easy Off Oven Cleaner in the Yellow label, or it's main active ingredient ( Caustic Soda , NaOH , Sodium Hydroxide , that you can buy separately from a household goods store like Wilkinsons in here in England for example) on Styrene body shells.

A very small number of people have in the past reported some success with it used on PolyCarbonate (people call it Lexan but that's a trade name of GE for PolyCarbonate and for all I know Tamiya might be using Bayer brand " Makrolon " or other PolyCarbonates ) but note that a vast majority of people have had their PolyCarbonate bodies crack and go into a thousand pieces and go cloudy and horridly brittle when they have used Caustic Soda on them ;) .

I had an original PolyCarbonate body from the Optima by Kyosho that I stipped the paint from easily by immersing it for some minutes in Glow Fuel ( O'Donnell racing Fuel, 15 per cent NitroMethane ) but I remember also leaving a scrap test piece of PolyCarbonate from the Tamiya Frog with some PS spray paint on it overnight in the same fuel and the plastic ended up warped and soft when I came back to examine it... :blink: The PS paint didn't come off. There are only 2 ways of removing PS paint, Tamiya makes a paint remover in a jar for it, but it works very slowly indeed, or else you can spray on some more PS of any color and then rub and the thinner in it should dissolve the dried on paint underneath. Don't worry about any clouding of the PolyCarbonate due to the etchant in the PolyCabonate-specific paint that was formerly used on the shell (the paint that you strip off) since you can either repaint over the clouding and it should give OK results (but residual traces of the previous paint may still be visible usually) or you can use abrasive sheets of various grades to go over the clouding (use P400 and then P600, P800, P1000) and then repaint and the clouding will magically dissappear along with any trace of the original paint. The problem areas are in the corners. For more valuable shells it's often better to get a new reproduction shell.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

Thank you for your very detailed reply.

I will have a go using Glow Fuel as you have suggested. Hopefully it will strip out the old paint and not affect the shell.

Cheers.

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I'm hi-jacking this thread :blink:

I just tried to strip some paint of of a mud blaster body with oven cleaner but nothing happened. My question is: does brake fluid work when oven cleaner don't?

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I'm hi-jacking this thread :blink:

I just tried to strip some paint of of a mud blaster body with oven cleaner but nothing happened. My question is: does brake fluid work when oven cleaner don't?

Oven Cleaner i.e. Caustic Soda is highly Alkaline. Other things like Parma Fashine are highly acidic. Fashine is harmless to PolyCarbonate as well as Styrene and strips paint very well indeed.

Whether the paint comes off depends on whether it is susceptible to attack by either acid or alkali. One or the other usually does the trick.

Brake fluid usually also turns PolyCarbonate into a cloudy brittle mess. The trick would be to keep it on for little time as possible. But Fashine seems to be harmless and glow fuel can be kept on for many minutes without problems, just not all night LOL.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

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My friend is currently stripping a 300zx body (see through type) i gave hm some nitro fuel i had left in the shed its probly a year old now , is taking the red off slowely but the bonnet is white and we are not sure what paint was used as we got the body off ebay. its not touching the white though!

would fresh fuel do it ?

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My friend is currently stripping a 300zx body (see through type) i gave hm some nitro fuel i had left in the shed its probly a year old now , is taking the red off slowely but the bonnet is white and we are not sure what paint was used as we got the body off ebay. its not touching the white though!

would fresh fuel do it ?

I remember that Petrol "goes off" after a couple of years or so and smells bad or something, according to what I saw on TV. Straight Glow fuel is 80 percent Methanol ( Alcohol ) and 20 per cent Castor oil, but model car glow fuel tends to have less Methanol, and Synthetic oil (and just a little Castor oil) which you need a lot less of compared to Castor oil, and a fair amount of NitroMethane which adds oxygen to the fuel and makes it burn faster therefore, for more horsepower and faster throttle response. I don't know whether NitroMethane based fuels can "go off" AFTER they have been opened? But I don't think they can go off when they are still sealed and never opened?

Apparently it's the NitroMethane that strips the paint, so you'd be there forever trying to strip paint with straight glow fuel, as far as I read.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

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