[RAIIIJudge]

howdy, friends ..

got my four JAs back from media blasting and apparently one rim had been powder coated ... blasting was only able to remove maybe half the paint (the easy half). a razor blade works okay on the straightaways but for the deep contours no way.

anyone have any experience here?

thanks,
mike
MA

[Rachelsdad]

Chemical stripping is probably your best option. If you can find a stripping company in your area with baths (hot stripping is probably best), that would be a good option. Cold stripping works, too, with a brush and a scraper and probably a wire wheel (ugh). The nice thing about the hot stripping is that the wheel is submerged in a tank with no manual scrubbing effort (and chance for mishaps). Cold stripping can be done with a tank as well, but I don't believe its as effective.

GL
HTH

[Stan65]

Burn it off with a torch. You don’t have to get it crazy hot. It will bubble and get brittle way before you start effecting the steel. Then it’s easy to blast or wire brush. It’s just plastic so it doesn’t take a lot of heat.

[78w72]

X2 for chemical stripping. I recently bought a 72 HO aluminum intake that had been powder coated with a very thick coat of silver, I called a local powder coating company to ask what they suggest for stripping & they said to bring it in and they will put it in their chemical tank to strip it and it wouldnt hurt the metal.

This was a cold chemical with no physical work needed, she said it usually needs overnight to 24 hours to work on thick coatings. Picked it up the next day & 99% of it was gone, just some very small spots left where it was extra thick around casting numbers that chipped off by hand with a small screwdriver.

Most powder coating companies should have this stuff since they work with powder coating and have to strip items sometimes. Otherwise heat & manual scraping/sanding should work.

[Joe]

Headed up powder coating operations for our global factories for years prior to retirement. We only ever used plastic blasting media. Worked great on all material substrates without harming them.

[RAIIIJudge]

put stripping this particular rim on the fall-back burner as it'll be in the trunk as spare

guy who blasted the other (non powder coated) rims says had he insisted further rim would have started losing metal around the sharp edges.

seems like only choice I have is to try chemical stripping?

thanks for your thoughts,
mike
MA

[mrennie]

I have a set of Wheel Vintiques Rally 2s that were powder I stripped them with glass grit so I could refinish them and 4 other GM wheels at the same time.

Very slow to strip compared to paint but got it done.

Epoxy coated and moved on to paint.