This topic hasn’t been discussed here in many years. I am about to start a ground up restoration of an XK-140 OTS. My goal is to nave a high quality driver, not a show car. My car is a California car with very little rust. My two basic questions are: 1) Is it necessary to remove the body from the chassis. 2) How best to remove paint to bare metal. I understand the best restoration would be to remove the body, however, it seems I can access 90% of the chassis without removing the body. If I don’t plan to have the body and chassis chemically dipped the body removal is a big step that might be avoided. How best to remove paint? I am thinking a chemical paint remover (…much elbow grease) followed by media blast in corners that are in-accessable to hand stripping. Your thoughts would be much appreciated.
If you are planning to go down to bare metal over the whole car I think you will get very discouraged after a short time working under the car doing the difficult to access parts. I would highly recommend separating the body and frame so that they can be put on a rotisserie and worked on in comparative comfort and avoid all that rust and other nasty stuff in your eyes.
Tom, I have successfully stripped several cars (5) in my garage using chemical stripper. It is tedious but I find rewarding process. Some of the things I do:
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Use aviation grade stripper.
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Use heavy suitable gloves.
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Get lots of newspapers! I placed newspapers under the area I am stripping and at the end of the working period, I carefully fold them up and put them in a trash bag.
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I strip only one panel at a time and do not progress to the next one until I am through with the one I am working on. I choose a panel or area size I can easily do in the time I have allowed to work that day.I leave room to clean up well and leave the cleaned area clean! It is motivational just to see it as the area grows to an entirely stripped car.
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Ventilate well, the fumes are dangerous.
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I use heavy steel wool to remove the paint once it raises up.
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W/r the underside: I usually have the car up pretty high on jackstands anyway. I usually scrape any mud or loose undercoating off the underside and scrub the area with soap and water and let it dry. I usually use a rubberized undercoating sometimes followed by body color. On some cars you have to strip a lot of the underside, such as the bottom of the boot on an E Type.I just lay on my side and not work directly overhead. Wear safety goggle and take your time.
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About priming etc. On my Stag, I stripped off the factory skim coat of filler. I used a zillion gallons of primer blocking that car and then the body shop would not paint it for me because they hadn’t coated the bare steel. I don’t blame them . I later found a shop willing to paint it. It was fine. I also bought an E Type which had been left in primer over a skim coat of filler on the rear quarters, The paint shop called me in and showed me the body had rusted under the filler so they had to strip it again. For me, it’s easier to get the body to the painter in the bare steel, even if it rusts slightly as it is easier to remove than bad primer. Never oil it to prevent rust!
Michael, I appreciate your thoughts. The people that criticize stripper generally cite the fact that it is difficult to get into corners etc., That is why I was thinking to use a combination, stripper first then perhaps a light sand / media blast to get residue corners etc. I have heard the leaded portions of the Jaguar body can be damaged by chemical dipping and aggressive blasting so I am thinking careful use of a stripper and steel wool will be the best answer. Thanks for your thoughts, that helps.
Geoff, Good points. And with the body off, I can literally flip the chassis upside down and do a very effective job on that section. Thanks, Tom A
Michael made some excellent points about using stripper. One other point on stripper is that if it is warm and dry in the area where it is being used the stripper will often dry out too quickly which limits the effectiveness. Covering the stripper with plastic once it is applied will reduce the amount you end up using. 2 mil poly works well and is cheap. Stripper is very caustic and will damage eyes badly if it gets in them. I would never use unless you are looking down on the workpiece and safety goggles PLUS a full face safety mask is not overkill. Post pictures!
I never found that to be a problem EXCEPT if you brush a bunch of paint into a corner and let it dry before you clean it out completely. Then you have a chunk of hard stuff t get out. I managed that problem by not tryin to strip too large an area at once so I had plenty of time for thorough cleanup. I generally have a spray bottle of water I can blast a corner with water if necessary. I also buy numerous small metal acid brushes of brass or steel for getting into corners (rarely used). It just has never been an issue for me. There are a lot greater challenges in maintaining a Jaguar than that one in my view.
Great points!!!
Good advice. I had forgotten about the plastic covering idea to speed the process.Thanks for the reminder, good advice.
That is a great point about attacking small areas, it is easy to get too ambitious and finding you didn’t do an effective job. I might as well plan that it may take a month or more of near daily activity. I’d be happy with that.
The most rewarding thing for me personally about restoring cars is the sense of satisfaction I get when I can look at something I’ve done and be proud for my friends to look at it (or my enemies!) I have gone down to my garage at night after I’ve showered and relaxed, and pull the car cover off and inspect my work. I have on occasion had to mark with a piece of blue tape where something needs attention, Generally though, I feel good about what I’ve done.(Getting through college I used to carpool with a lady who was taking a much lighter load than I. We both worked for the same company and were night school students, I was surprised at how light her load was compared to mine, but she had the equivalent of straight A plusses.She graduated after I did, but she had a lot of nice things in her resume.Like they say we’re in a marathon, not a sprint! (I at least graduated before my son did.)
March 8
TomA:
I might as well plan that it may take a month or more of near daily activity. I’d be happy with that.
The most rewarding thing for me personally about restoring cars is the sense of satisfaction I get when I can look at something I’ve done and be proud for my friends to look at it (or my enemies!) I have gone down to my garage at night after I’ve showered and relaxed, and pull the car cover off and inspect my work. I have on occasion had to mark with a piece of blue tape where something needs attention, Generally though, I feel good about what I’ve done.(Getting through college I used to carpool with a lady who was taking a much lighter load than I. We both worked for the same company and were night school students, I was surprised at how light her load was compared to mine, but she had the equivalent of straight A plusses.She graduated after I did, but she had a lot of nice things in her resume.Like they say we’re in a marathon, not a sprint! (I at least graduated before my son did.)
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Soda blasting: very difficult to distort a panel, there will be no evidence of the paint, and the blasting medium is environmentally benign.
There are folks who will travel to your location to do it.
I will never again subject myself to chemically stripping a car.
NEVER.
Prior to applying the stripper, it speeds things up a lot to run an angle grinder with flapper disc across the paint surface ( disc with ~P80 grit)…not enough to go to bare metal, or heat the surface, but it allows a lot less stripper to be used, and facilitates use of a scraper.
Quite often, a few coats are needed, the less the better, as it does get tiresome after a while.
I also prefer to do one panel at a time, completely prep the surface, and once in that state, get 2 pac red primer on it, once that is done, it wont start rusting for a long time
I’ll give it a try. Thanks
I think that’s a good idea, the abrasive helps the stripper to penetrate. Thanks.
Stripping a car of its paint is not beyond DIY but … pondering the adjective and noun carefully … it’s a &#@king shitload of work. Miserable, dirty, unhealthy, time consuming, soul draining drudgery. A couple or three gallons of aircraft stripper will take almost all of it off. I refer to the methylene chloride stuff that bubbles multi layers of paint and brain cells in minutes. (If you can find it. Banned in many jurisdictions. Forget about using the newest safer paint strippers for a restoration - they preserve your brain cells for a much longer time while conveniently taking forever to work. Allegedly work. In my experience they don’t, though if you have lots of grant time to de-crud an archeological find it’s probably ideal.) Assuming you’ve used the good stuff, scrape the caustic mess off onto multi layers of old newspaper, rinse the metal down with lots of water and send the newsprint slush to landfill. Probably your clothes too. Then, if you really want to get it clean you’ll need to scrape and chisel and media blast what’s left - rust and residual paint, seam sealer and paint/stripper schmutz. Then you need to get the stripped steel coated and sealed up before it starts to rust. Don’t neglect your PPEs. Your hobby shouldn’t contribute to your inevitable demise.
I’ve done this three times. It makes me tired just thinking about it. If I was faced with doing it again I’d either pay someone else to do it (soda blasting comes to mind) or not do it at all.
The brief version, not including taking measurements, checking packing to chassis etc.:
I cut my 140DHC in half at the sills, approx 6" behind the A posts. The two halves were much easier to move around than a complete shell, and the sills were scheduled for replacement anyway.
The bare chassis was then collected by the local blasting company (used him for years, and highly recommended - does a lot of work for the Aston Martin factory restoration department which is not far from me) who removed all the paint and rust and delivered back to me one week later. He shoots a grey weld-through primer over the metal ASAP after blasting. When he delivered the chassis back, he took both parts of the body away with him, blasted and primed them, and returned them around 3-4 weeks later. All this, including collection and delivery, cost me around £400.
I don’t see how you could do proper repairs to the rear floor and boot floor etc. with the body on the chassis. It would be extremely hard to get the spotwelder into position, make and dress MIG or TIG welds from beneath, etc. Whilst chemical stripper will remove paint, it won’t remove rust. Over the decades I have learnt that a panel with surface rust but no visible holes can be severely compromised, which only becomes apparent once a decent blaster has cleaned it up. If media blasting, in the hands of a pro, can make holes in a sheet of metal, that tells you that that panel needed replacing anyway. Nothing worse than discovering pinholes at the paint stage.
That said, I use a combination of chemical stripper (Synstrip) and a particular Würth non-heat-generating flap wheel for the aluminium panels, i.e. bootlid and bonnet.
I postponed doing Tweety’s body resto for years, precisely because of that.
I WILL NOT do chemical paint stripping, ever again.
See my above statement: if chemical stripping was my only option… I would still not do it.
Great . NOW ya tell me. 
I had a dustless blaster come to the house to clean the frame and chassis parts of the MGTC. $700.00 for 4 hours of his time not including travel, saved me dozens of hours of work and did a better job. They put a rust inhibitor in the water. It was weeks before I painted anything, no hint of rust popping up anywhere.
