Hi All,

looking for help with paint on plastic. I recently purchased three funmate cars (all plastic - mustang, torino, t-bird). These were cars given out by General mills in the 70's. I thought I had bought by the pictures original cars but two of them have been repainted. Why I do not know since the cars are moulded in the color so scratches do not show?

How do i get paint off without melting the plastic - I know the airplane stripper from Wal mart will probably melt them. I do not know how Pine Sol will react. I have heard that Easy off would work but I have gotten that stuff on my skin and it burns, so my thinking is that it will melt the plastic.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Dave

i know when stripping some of my die-cast with non-acetone nail polish remover, it removed the paint but did not affect the plastic areas. you might want to try it on an inconspicuous area first to make sure.

The non acetone remover doesn't melt it but I've seen it do weired things to some of it. Its like it brings out the cooling lines of the plastic. :confused: :freak: You gotta see it to know.

I used "Cox" model airplane fuel to take enamel off of polyurathane (sp) like model cars are made of. It won't kraze it.

Hey Dave!

You're kind of up against a trial by fire here,depending on the makeup of the plastic you're working with different chemicals will react differently to it.

Enamel is fairly easy to remove with PineSol,GooGone,OOPS,or lighter fluid,and yet again I stress that the wrong chemical may "craze"/dull, and possibly fog/fade the body itself.
Try some of the mentioned chemical removers on some similar plastic, and see what happens to it.
I will suggest that if you apply a chemical to these bodies and it does have a reaction, a nice way to bring back some shine and smoothness is FUTURE Acrylic Floor Polish, I have used it to remove 50% of the milkyness and fill in scratches on windows/windshields crazed by thinner.
Hope some of this helps You.


Jeff Fleetwood

I collect slot cars, and I found a tip that works GREAT to remove paint from the plastic bodies... soak them in Spic'N'Span. Found it here:

http://www.ho-slotcars.com/

Click FAQs to the left, then choose Painting/Decaling tips. There's a section on different chemicals to use on plastic. Here's a before-and-after of what S'n'S did for me:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rwurtz/images/restored01a.jpg

Like the guy said at the other site, the S'n'S actually left the original detail paint on the car and removed all the "custom" paint.

Now for the disclaimer:
Aurora cars are made of cycolac, which is a kind of ABS. I dunno exactly what the Funmate cars are made of (though I do have a Funmate Cougar... pretty cool...)

FWIW, I've used PineSol to remove paint from JL plastic slot car bodies with no apparent ill results. In fact, PineSol is the weapon of choice for most slotheads that customize JL slots. And I totally back up Jeff's suggestion to use Future to restore shine... it works WONDERS...

--rick

Thanks everyone, I'll try out a few suggestions and let you know how it goes.

Dave

Hi when I mess up a platic model i strip it with easy off oven cleaner it doesnt harm the plastic at all!! No Joke....

Could you post some pictures of the Mustang, Torino, and Thunderbird please? I don't think I've seen these before.

Swifty I will try but I seem to have troubles with posting, are there any instructions I could follow. I always get that the pictures are too large.


Dave

Anytime a pic is too large, here's an easy way to shrink it:
1. Open it in MS Paint.
2. Click the Image drop-down menu.
3. Select "Stretch/Skew" from the menu.
4. In the "Stretch" Horizontal and Vertical boxes, enter a number less than 100. For example, if you want the pic to be 50% of its original size, enter 50 in both boxes. For some cameras set to take killer hi-res pictures, you can easily reduce pictures to 25% size for Web use. Whatever number you use, be sure to enter the SAME number in both Horizontal and Vertical, or you'll distort your picture.
5. Click OK. It may take a minute, but it'll shrink the pic.
6. Important: Now click "Save As" and save the shrunken pic USING A DIFFERENT NAME from the original. If you don't change the name, the new small pic will overwrite your nice detailed hi-res pic. I usually just add something at the end, like "camaro01.jpg" becomes "camaro01a.jpg" or something like that...
Now you can use the new smaller pic on the Net...

hth--

--rick

Here is a try at a picture or two....

better?

http://photos.hobbytalk.com/showphoto.php?photo=3984&sort=2&cat=500&page=1