fastest way to strip paint off car

Ok... Here's what I know about media blasting and stripping cars that I've painted and what I would suggest on a budget;

Avoid media blasting on a budget, unless you like masking every gap on the car.

Media gets EVERYWHERE. You will blow it out of frame rails and the interior eight times and still get sand or whatever media you used, out of the car, for months.

Unless you are doing some serious surgery down low on the car for rust, avoid it. It can show up while you are painting it. Those little drain holes will act as a venturi and spit sand all over panels.

When I tore the back end apart on the AAR at work, last week, I was shocked at how much garnet was trapped in the front area of the lower quarter panels. I ended up making a vacuum wand to get piles of it out from where the rocker panels meet the quarters, from blasting the rear seat area.

I think I got about 2lbs of media out of each one, and this was after I blew the rockers out, months ago, when I acid etch primed the car when I got it back.

You can media blast it, but mask the daylights out of holes and gaps in the car, or you will get sand in the finish when painting.

What I do on a budget;

Get paint stripper from Home Depot. Any will do. They are all ammonia based. Some of the aircraft/ automotive ones have more ketone in them, but even the house paint stripper will do it's job on your car.

Get cheap drop cloth plastc, put the stripper on the panel in one brush direction, as thick as you can get it on and lay the plastic over the panel and stripper. Let it do it's thing for about 20-30 minutes. Do as much as you like at one time.

Once you get the majority of it scraped off, do it again on any areas that you think it may need, but don't worry about getting all of it off. The stripper will weaken the paint that sticks, significantly. Scrape off as much as you can on to more drop cloth plastic and pitch it in the trash.

After that, come back in the next day with it dry, scrape it dry again with the paint scraper to get any loose shale off, then hit it with a DA sander with 80 grit.

180 is ideal for primer, but what I've found is that 180 does not bite hard surfaces enough. It does great on feathering soft surfaces, primer, filler, paint, plastic, etc., but 80 works better to remove old paint and give good mechanical adhesion on hard surfaces.

The paint stripper for house siding works and is cheap. a roll of 80 grit paper runs about $40

hope this helps.

Dave