Tips for stripping paint

Good luck with that one. MTH paint is extremely difficult to remove. You must be all the lead the Chinese like to put in their stuff . Anyway, the best thing is to try to chemically remove as much of the paint as possible. And then carefully Sand down any logos, markings. or high spots. That wasn't the way recommended to me by an expert painter. Andy J.

In my post above, take any words that don't make sense and think of the opposite words that make sense. I have an iPhone, and I use the voice command that gets really goofy sometimes. It must be too early in the morning for it . Andy J.

I've had good luck stripping paint with oven cleaner.  I paint it on, then put the victim in a plastic ziplock bag overnight.  Brush it the next day and rinse.

Stripping MTH pain off of freight cars is not as bad as it is to strip off MTH locomotives. EL OFF and Scalecoat paint remover will work.

I stripped 2 MTH locomotives about 6 weeks ago. I used 91% alcohol and it took about 1 hour and they were completely clean. The alcohol is cheap and you can pick it up at Walgreens or CVS.

Malcolm

Though I have repainted several O gauge items, MTH experience with repainting MTH items is limited to two projects. A few years ago, I repainted a MTH Weirton Steel bobber caboose. Like Brother Love, I used the 91% alcohol. The paint came off the plastic shell quickly and easy. The blue paint would not come off the diecast frame though...even after a week of soaking in the 91%. I had a similar experience, last week, with UP yellow on a diecast auxiliary tender. MTH paint on diecast can be tough to remove. Perhaps it is only certain colors or time periods that MTH had bullet proof paint on diecast. On the two troublesome items, I resorted to sanding.

I just finished stripping the paint on a postwar 2035 about 2 weeks ago.  I used a product from Lowes called CitriStrip which is a gel.  The paint softening went fine but removing the coagulated paint with a brass parts brush was a disaster for me because the paint and gel were quickly clogging up the brush and the entire mess began to harden again. 

 

I got out my pressure washer and used that to strip the paint.  It worked very well and 95% of the paint was easily removed.  Another advantage of the pressure washer was that paint was removed in the crevices of the engine that the wire brush was missing.

 

I decided to dry the engine with my air compressor and apply a second coat of paint remover to remove the remaining paint.  Surprisingly, almost all of the remaining paint came off with my air compressor.  I have no idea why some of the paint stayed on with my 1800 psi water spray and then came off with my 80 psi air blast, but it did.  The pressure washer and the air compressor really saved this job, because it was becoming quite a mess with the wire brush. 

 

Earl

Keith is correct. The alcohol will not work on the metal components. I use regular thick bodied paint remover for the metal. It is messy & smelly but it works. Malcolm

My mothers spring and fall tonic. It was supposedly to keep you from getting sick but it would put hair on your chest or take it off which ever the case may be.I know it would have stripped paint.

We called it holy water because the first words out of your mouth after swallowing it were "God Almighty".

If it's metal westley's bleech white for white wall tires works well.
Plastic? mix up a tub of Tide detergent and let it soak for several days  and it'll lift the paint off.

David

I've used Pine-Sol in the past but that stuff is nasty and it turns the paint all gooey..like it attacks it.

Lately I've had good luck with Super Clean as it seems to attack the paint bond and not the paint or plastic though it may take a week to soak.

I've never tried it, but I talked to a fella last week at a train show that did a lot of nice custom paint work. He said brake fluid worked really well. Just soak the piece, then everything washes away with soap and water.

Thanks guys I started stripping the paint about 20 mins ago when I got home from school me and my dad are gonna paint it our railroads livery of the Brewster & Pittsburgh railroad  I gotta work on the logo now.

I had someone tell me brake fluid---not sure I want try that one...

Nail polish remover works really good. Regular nail polish remover is Acetone. I use it with a cotton swab to remove lettering. Once I accidentally picked some non-acetone nail polish remover. To my surprise it worked even better and stripped the entire boxcar clean.

When you talk about 91% alcohol, are you talking about denatured or isopropyl? 

Hiawatha,

91% Isopropyl only. The other stuff does not like plastic. I use 91% on my prewar all the time. On some of the early Lionel I have to use regular brake fluid. The synthetic stuff doesn't work as well.

 

I always use 99% Isopropyl alcohol for any such task.  It's useful for cleaning as well as it contains only trace amounts of water.  I see no reason to use the lower concentrations.

Where do you find 99% IPA? The highest concentration I can find in the store is 91%.

I bought it at Safeway Supermarket, I'm sure there are other places that carry it.  As far as the difference, the additional water does make a difference.

All Safeways carry the product. THE 99% has 8% less water and is somewhat quicker acting. Sometimes referred to in technical terms as a hill of beans.

Save yourself. Get some 600 - 800 grit wet/dry sandpaper and sand off the stenciling and any lines so they won't show through when painting over. 

I've never been successful removing MTH paint.

I have used denatured alcohol as a paint remover on MTH trains.  It works to remove logos and graphics.  I have not used it to remove all of the paint, but enough to give you a consistantly smooth surface to apply your new colors without the old graphics showing through.  Lightly soak a rag with denatured alcohol and repeatedly rub until the old CR logo fades away.

 

Now , anyone ever strip paint off of painted aluminum passenger cars?  Ribbed sides cars.