It seems that my paint experiment 5 years ago has come to an end. I really liked the satin finish on the ST but the TX sun had turned my clear yellow and it was starting to peel. This meant it was time to start stripping paint. Since it failed, it all had to come off. I was not excited about the prospect of stripping POR15 products. From my experience, when properly installed this stuff is incredibly stout and difficult to remove. I admit that 5 years later there were no rock chips across the front despite numerous Hill Country excursions and multiple track outings. too bad the clear failed, I am a believer.
If you are still reading, I know you are still asking... "How do you strip POR15 and how do you do it in 2.5 hours." I am glad you asked. Let's start with saying that I have a 2.5 year old son. The thought of using dichloromethane based chemical strippers was about my only option but not a good one due to potential exposure to my ever present helper. The choice of mechanical abrasion with the DA/Grinder was not much better due to the amount of dust. I didn't want to completely disassemble the car for full media blasting and the cost makes this unattractive.
Time to take advantage of a new tool. Make sure your friends have something you can borrow that outputs a bit more energy than you really need.
Take one of these:
Make it go to "eleven":
And start washing... About 2 hours later you end up with clean metal and fiberglass with no damage to the lights, lenses, mirrors, glass or any other part on the car.
In reality, this pressure washer puts out about 5500 psi and has a 300F diesel heater. Nothing like super heated steam to get things going. In reality, I was just taking advantage of my chemistry background. This is not much different than using a heat gun to soften the paint and scrape it off. I just added a little extra "scraping power".
The best part is that tomorrow when the ground dries I can just rake up the paint flakes and dispose of them as normal garbage! Here are my results.
Now I need to disassemble, block the surface, prep, shoot epoxy and have it ready for the painter in another two weeks.