The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop visor

Just picked up a aluminum visor real cheap, need to strip some paint off and a few minor dents need picked. Any special stripper for aluminum metal, Just a thought. could you buff the whole piece to a shine, might look nice if this is possible, maroon 53 pickup.
anybody have any experience with this or comments?

Any chemical stripper will work fine on aluminum. You can polish aluminum, in that case don't bother to strip the paint first, just start right in with a stripper pad and keep reducing the grit and then go to rubbing compound and then polishing compound. It would look great, be a lot of work though. You could protect it with wax or a clear coat of some kind.

most auto parts sell aircraft stripper---i've used the stuff and it works great

I dunn about that - I have an aluminum visor and some fool poured paint remover on it and the aluminum now its badly pitted so beware , YMMV ! .

Koolkar is right. Aircraft stripper is designed to take paint off aluminum aircraft bodies. That aluminum visor will polish out nice. Start with 220 grit wet & dry sand paper & work your way up to 2000 grit. Once you get it shiney with paper it will need to be polished. You will need to use some kind of sealer [ clear coat] after its polished to prevent oxidation [ it will be tough removing the polishing compound so you can get the clear coat to stick ]. Usually those aluminum visors were designed to be painted. If you decide to paint the visor, after its stripped, use a self etching primer designed to bond to aluminum, then top coat with the color you want.Dont forget the underside of those visors was always a flat green color. This was done because this color absorbed the most light & helped to prevent glare.

I used the aircraft stripper, worked great, thanks guys! The underside flat green was in great shape just cleaned it up and let it go as is. Decided to paint, have only primed to this point. Held it up to my 53, looks great, my son has a friend who has tons of 55,56,57 chevy car parts, didn't know where he picked up the visor but sold it to us for $50. Great buy, said he could get at least $150 at swap meets.

Any stripper that is alkaline based will dissolve the aluminum. Use only a stripper that is designed to remove paint from aluminum; aircraft sounds right to me.

Caustic strippers (lye - lime - drano - etc) will chemically attack aluminum.

Also, "caustic strippers" will make snide and offensive comments to the patrons--nyuck nyuck nyuck