How to remove truck's spray/house paint job?

My truck was apparently pretty hastily painted over before I bought it as it's been coming off when I pressure wash it. Some of the paint is holding on more than other spots, but it looks like underneath the original is a nice color of Evergreen Pearl. I'd like to remove all this cover paint and see how bad the original paint is underneath. I can see that it's got some dings in it, but honestly, I'd rather have the dinged up original paint than the combination rolled on house paint & spray paint that I'm currently rocking!

Is there something that I can use to take off this top coat that won't fry the original paint underneath? Mineral spirits and a rag? Gasoline? I figure if the Evergreen Pearl is in too bad of shape, I can either get some touch up paint for that color or just rattle can the whole thing black instead of having the current Franken-Paint scheme.

On the picture by the door it looks like the green stripe is from a spray can, but the black looks brushed on. And you can even see the original green poking out from behind the black.

I guess they didn't feel like painting the roof of the truck as that looks to be original paint with some brush strokes around the edges.

Then in the bed there's some white spray paint like he didn't have a piece of cardboard to lay something down on to paint it, so he just used the truck bed!

 

sandpaper

 

And a ton of elbow grease

 

Sandblaster

 

But I mean, seriously. How much effort are you willing to put in to this thing? It's not like the body panels are in factory new condition here.

Also, why are you washing your truck with a pressure washer? Are you *trying* to take the paint off?

 

I'm sure sandpaper or sandblaster would do the trick, but I'm also hoping to salvage the paint underneath.

I do have an RPG on standby as a last resort.

 

If they painted it, there probably isn't anything worth preserving underneath.

I'd citristrip the whole thing and paint it. (if citrstrip will deal with auto paint, i think it does)

 

I had planned on just painting the bed. I took it to the car wash to spray out the bed, and had a little time left on the nozzle so I sprayed down the truck. Obviously I'm not going to get this thing looking factory new, and I don't particularly mind the current thrown together paint job, but if it's got decent paint underneath, I also wouldn't mind spending my day off huffing mineral spirits and rubbing down the truck.

 

you cant really paint over a shit paint job. kinda got start from the bare substrate

 

Interesting.. I've never used that stuff before, but it sounds promising.

 

Have you tested to see if its latex or oil paint? If its latex you might be able to just strip that with something specifically for latex.

 

Yeah, it's all about the prep work. Previous "painter" didn't prep it, probably just prayed over the clear coat.

If you want to have any hope of new paint sticking, you gotta sand it down. You probably don't have to get *all* the way to clean bare metal, but all that new paint crap, and the original clear coat (whatever is left of it) need to come off.

Then just rattle can over it, or get one of those harbor freight air sprayers and go to town on it.

Or do Raptorliner.

 

JUST KEEP PRESSURE WASHING

 

I doubt you'll be able to salvage anything underneath. Nothing worth showing off anyway. You can get down to a layer that you could be confident is securely attached to the sheet metal, but you're most likely going to destroy the finish.

 

Well, you can, but you just get another shit paint job, lol.

 

I used rubbing alcohol on a q-tip and rubbed the paint. A tiny amount of green came up. I think that means it's latex according to google?

 

You are probably correct. The ease with which some of the paint came off with the pressure washer made me think that I might want to spend a little time taking off the rest and see what I've got. But only one side is coming off easy, so it seems that they used something different (or did better prep) on the other side.

The original plan was just to roll on bed liner for the whole paint job, and I may stick with that. I'll probably just drive it like this for the winter and figure out what I want to do in the spring.

 

sounds right. Might be an option to just strip that to see how bad it is underneath.

 

I can't say I'm not guilty of spending a bunch of prep time on one side, then getting lazy/impatient and saying "F it" on the other.

Just remember that bed liners is still just a paint. If you don't prep it well, it will still flake off.

 

I went back to the car wash and actually tried to take off the paint this time. I got a lot off. Most of the green underneath looks fine to me, but there are some chips here and there around the hood and on the bed. Looks like my paint job will be evolving over the winter after every trip to the car wash, and I'll still wait until spring to figure out what I want to do with it.