Today I began the long task of removing the rotten house paint that is strewn all over this poor vehicle.
Rust is one thing but the paint is another.
Some people reckons it saves metal......well, not in this bus, mate!
On the recommendation of some mates I tried Citristrip.
My missus has used this stuff before and it's very effective but I played it safe and tried it in an innocuous spot first....the inside of the fuel filler cover.
Here's the before pic:
And after a liberal supply of Citristrip and 25 minutes or so:
These results were encouraging so I decided to go for broke on the upper back RHS corner of the bus.
Before:
And after:
There were some scary moments.
As I was scraping off the paint around the belt line I noticed some red paint here coming through UNDER the blue:
To begin with I though it was a factory undercoat and I'd buggered it up.
But on closer examination there is ANOTHER layer of blue below the red.
Clearly at some point in it's life it was resprayed over the factory paint with a similar if not identical colour.
Most of the way around there's nothing between but here there's red between the layers.
What it does mean is I'll have to carefully sand the last of the 2nd layer of blue with very fine sandpaper, perhaps steel wool, to get to the bottom layer before polishing.
But yeah, it's a good sign.
I'm a school teacher and have the next week and a half off so it's goal for my hols to get all that paint off the outside, if not the inside.
The main thing is not to rush.
It's preservation not eradication afterall.