The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Patina question

Anyone have a good suggestion on uncovering the hand painted company advertising on the side of my truck? What has happened is I can see the patina, but it appears that someone has hand painted over it, to cover the lettering.
I tried scotch brite, but it started to remove the lettering.

I think it would be cool if I could restore the slogan on the side, and leave the original paint unscathed if possible.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Don't know if it would work, but your best bet might be to wet sand with 1500 or 2000 grit sandpaper.

You might try a thin layer of diluted paint stripper. Often times paint stripper will only remove one layer at a time... test on a small area.

You might also try lacquer thinner. Sign paint is enamel and old trucks were painted with enamel and lacquer thinner has much less effect on enamel. You may have lucked out and the top coat could be lacquer which could be stripped off quite easily without having much effect on the paint underneath it.

Sandpaper or any other abrasive is just going to cut whatever it comes in contact with.

If it were me, and none of my suggestions worked, I'd go at it with the sandpaper until I could see it well enough to make a tracing and then find an old-school sign painter to re-create it.

Regardless, I'm always looking for vintage door art and would appreciate a photo for the collection linked to below.

Good luck but I don't think you'll have any. I faced a similar issue with my data plate the the PO had rattle can painted over. I've found no way to remove just the rattle can paint and leave the factory paint. I ended up having to buy a repop data plate which obviously you can't do.

I've heard that oven cleaner will work. I've used rubbing compound myself and had decent results, just take your time and don't over do it.

I don't know if this would work for your application or not but I had my '99 S-10 vandalized with spray paint on the tail gate. I used nail polish remover on a soft cloth. Rubbed it on very gently and it got the spray paint off but didn't do anything to the finish. I then washed the entire area with soap and water to get any residue off.

Good luck!

oven cleaner will take all the paint off

i build alot of model kits and if you have a way to get a lot of it and can soak the parts brake fluid takes paint off right down to the base metal/plastic

I had a similar situation to the one Tiny described with the painted over data plate. I was pretty lucky, a citrus based paint stripper took off the top paint layer and left the data plate looking great. I also took Woody's advice and tested it on another area first.

Ok,

Well I will print the suggestions and hit the medicine cabinet for the nail polish, (hope she won’t notice its missing) then head to the hardware store for the other supplies. I am optimistic that one of the ideas will work. If successful, I will post photos of the results. I would post photos now, but the camera just won’t pick it up.

Results forthcoming.

46Canopy

Nail polish remover is acetone with some moisturizer added. If you want to be able to apply fresh paint without having fisheye problems use straight acetone from the hardware store. It dissolves lacquer paint pretty well.

I'd try the very fine wet sandpaper method. Bought a motorcycle one time with a black gas tank, started sanding it down to re-paint and discovered a very nice blue paint job with flames underneath. Sanded very carefully with fine wet paper, turned out nice.
Good luck.