Restoration of old Tamiya Cars & Bodies

[sedge34]

I just wanted to ask a few people if they have any suggestion on how to restore the old lexan bodies of tamiya cars. I am in the process of restoring a couple of old cars, a Boomerang and a Falcon. I need to remove the paint from them without damaging the plastic, apart from using wet & dry sandpaper and slowly removing the paint by hand.

I have tried soaking a piece of an old plastic body with paint on in 'Cillit Bang', it did not even mark the plastic or touch the paint!

On www.tamiya101.com (http://www.tamiya101.com), there is a very good article on how to use Brake fluid to remove paint from ABS bodies, so I am experimenting with this to see if I get any results.

I also spoke with someone on ebay who had used a deep fat fryer to remove the paint from the body of a Falcon successfully. Details of his emails are below;

hi steve
thanks for your question.
i have found the best method of removing the old paint from shells to be too place the shell in a pre heated deep fat fryer on a high power setting for about 20 mins once you remove the shell you should find that the paint has completely dissolved and the shell will be so clear that you should find it difficult to see it in the fryer.
hope this helps.

hi steve
i found it to be trail error to begin with as i was leaving it longer than 20 mins and the shell was deforming a little but i have found that my delongi coolwall deep fat fryer is perfect for the job as it has an adjustable thermostat that give precise control of the sun flower oil and a 20 minute immersion time on the 50 degree setting is perfect.
if you are using a different deep fat fryer then i think you should do it on the chicken setting as this worked for a time for me with a kenwood model that i used previously but i found the immersion time to be best for a duration time off just 18 minutes.
hope this helps

If anyone has any ideas on this subject I would love to hear more, especially if they have successfully achieved it!

Steve

[jimmy]

I used to do a lot of this with the ABS shells, oven cleaner, caustic soda and brake fluid were my main weapons. But I never did a lexan shell - I got one in a trade that had been done with something, possibly brake cleaner, and it was cloudy.. it was a scorpion shell without windows so it didn't matter as the paint didn't show up the cloudyness but if you are doing a shell with a window its worth keeping in mind that the windows might be cloudy.

[sedge34]

I am in the process of trying to use brake fluid to remove the paint, I do not really fancy trying to use a delongie deep fat fryer to remove the paint!

Steve;)

[Andrew Simpson]

errr is paint thinners a stupid suggestion????

[sedge34]

I don't know! I will soak a piece of painted body in some and see what happens. Sounds silly but I had not even thought about using thinners or white spirits. I will let you know the results.

Steve:D

[stefke]

If The body wasn't painted with Pactra paint, use some nitro car fuel. Works brilliantly with Tamiya or Costum Color lexan paint.

[terry.sc]

I wouldn't bother with a deep fat fryer, I can possibly see it working on oil based paints but there are loads that aren't oil based.

This subject has been covered many times over the years on Tamiyaclub.com with many options covered. Do a search in their forums and you will have plenty of pages to trawl through, a lot of it I wouldn't recommend as it will destroy your body.

The best stuff has to be Delta Activator or Eliminator depending on the paint used http://www.tamiyaclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1572

Something that's easy to get hold of is nitro fuel. Safe on the body and rubbed on can loosen paint quickly but tends to take a long time to get all the paint off. Be aware there are a lot of paints are fuelproof by design.

Other alternatives that are sort of okay (but I wouldn't recommend any of them!) if you are careful are brake fluid, paint thinners and nail polish remover. They can be rubbed on and wiped off straight away, which isn't the most productive way of removing paint. Leave them on by soaking them and they will attack the body, making it cloudy and brittle. Some have supposedly had good experiences of these depending on very particular versions and conditions, for example brake fluid is safe in cold conditions (doesn't shift the paint though) but in warm weather the chemicals are more active and destroy bodies, but they all will irreparably damage pure polycarbonate. If a body goes cloudy the fluid has attacked the plasticisers in the polycarbonate and in extreme cases shells treated this way have been known to shatter in an impact.

Currently experimenting very successfully with De-Solv-It Graffiti Remover
http://www.screwfix.com/app/sfd/cat/pro.jsp?id=45293&ts=36494
Seem to be fine on bodies and does dissolve the paint as well. A bit trickier to use than Delta as it is a gel rather than a liquid so if you soak it you have to put the body in a bag to stop it drying out but does seem to work well and more importantly is safe on bodies.

Don't try any other graffiti removers though, they either aren't powerful enough to attack the paint or are so powerful the body will shatter into tiny pieces before the paint comes off.

I have been through loads of these different solutions and have destroyed several bodies in the process (the best was a graffiti remover that was so strong you could see the plastic cracking and melting right in front of you) and the De-Solv-It remover certainly looks to be performing almost as good as Delta Activator, the only advantage with Delta being you can just leave it overnight and come back to a clean body.

[sedge34]

I know that one of my bodies has got the original tamiya paint that was brushed on, the other bodies I am not sure about as they have been painted on the outside with presumably arspay paint that you buy from places such as 'Halfords' or possibly an acrylic type based paint such as 'Plasti-Kote'. I have got an old boomerang body that I am experimenting with in some brake fluid as we speak. The paint is ifting slowly. I will look into this graffiti remover though, sounds quite interesting.

Steve:cool:

[rcracer]

if i stuck a shell in the deep fat fryer my wife wife have my nuts off :D

[sedge34]

I know exactly what you mean, the very reason for this discussion!

Steve