Car detailing/Paint experts - Need help removing PAINTED pinstriping!
 

https://imgur.com/SNgyRok
So I just picked up my magma red 2014 370z yesterday and unfortunately the previous owner had pinstriping PAINTED on that goes from the headlights running all the way back to the rear quarter panel that goes into an ugly design. I tried using acetone and then lacquer thinner with a microfiber towel and rubbed with my finger tip using light pressure to avoid scratching the clear coat and the painted pinstriping is barely coming off. It seems to be some sort of hard enamel paint because it does not come off easy what so ever. It took me a good 10-15 minutes just to get off what I circled in the pictures.

https://imgur.com/a/lPSObsx
EDIT: My embedded pictures aren't showing up so I'll post the imgur link above
https://imgur.com/xgBGvqq
https://imgur.com/zDdNuRd


UPDATE: I decided to take a leap of faith and wet sand it with 1000 grit sandpaper and the paint comes off WAY easier. I was able to take off the same amount of paint in less than a minute by just wet sanding than I could with the lacquer thinner and microfiber towel. However, obviously it leaves the clear coat paint hazy so I will need to polish it out. I'll post more updates after I make more progress. See below.
https://imgur.com/OWwWJ0C

Wow that $hit is hideous. I would try taking it to body shop or detail shop and see if they remove that crap.

Tell me about it. I love the car but those painted designs make me cringe. Apparently the owner before me was an older gentleman so I guess you could say his taste was rather "interesting" to put it nicely.:shakes head:

Dear Lord. If you have any experience with an orbital polisher you could try to polish them off.

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I tried wet sanding with 1000 grit sandpaper and the paint came off much easier and way faster. I will just need to polish out the haziness after.

I’m in for the polisher and some heavy correcting polish... or have you just tried a clay bar and some detail spray?


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I have not tried those things but I will before I go wet sanding all the painted pinstripes away. Do you have any suggestions as far as which brand of heavy correcting polishes?

I wonder if this Meguiars ultra cut would do it?
https://www.meguiars.com/professiona...2-32-oz-liquid

Yeah anything is better than sand paper.

I’d run down to the local auto parts store and grab a clay bar and some detail spray before I even go the heavy correction polishing route. It might surprise you. Is the whole car striped?


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Thanks I'll look into this compound for sure I know Meguiar's products are good quality.

I will definitely stop after work tomorrow and pick some up. I agree I really don't want to affect the clear coat more than I have to. And the pin striping starts from the front quarter panel above the headlights and runs in 2 streaks all the way down the door panel and to the rear quarter panel into that ugly design on both sides of the car.:crying:

Better to hit the clear vs the base coat. The problem with painted pin stripe is the amount of labor to take it off. Doable but soooo expensive if a pro shop handles it and too time consuming if diy. The good news is it can be taken off. Based on your photo, it was quite a good amount of paint used on the clear and if it is rushed, the paint may unnecessarily get damaged. The other thing is why someone would put THAT kind of pin striping on a Z. So much disrespect.

All the disrespect. If the prior owner left any paperwork in the Z you could prob find out where they reside...

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I agree. The Z does not need any drawn on pin striping lines or decals, the natural lines and curves of the car compliment it more than enough. But like I said the owner was an older gentleman so who knows what the hell he was thinking (if he was thinking at all).:confused:

So quick update:
I tried clay barring with quick detailer and that did not work. I tried using a Meguiar's medium cut compound with a hand applicator pad and that didn't seem to really work either.

So far the only thing that works to quickly remove the pin striping is wet sanding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oewUG_2ei0s
It looks like I'll be taking this route.

Time to call the Junkman...


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Ahh, that explains the spotlight in town, shining the outline of a PC orbital polisher onto the clouds.

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Holy carnauba wax, Junkman!

Okay, here's the deal.

You're dealing with PAINT on top of CLEARCOAT.

You don't use paint thinners to remove paint from your clearcoat, unless the paint has just been spilled onto the clearcoat and it is still WET. Obviously, years of baked on pinstriping is NOT going to come off with paint thinner.

You don't use clay to remove paint.

Consumer clay is used for removing CONTAMINATION ON THE PAINT. You don't use clay to remove PAINT. That was a complete waste of time and money. Clay can be used to remove VERY LIGHT OVERSPRAY, but that stuff has not adhered to the paint so it can easily be removed a couple of different ways.

The only way to remove pinstriping is WET SANDING, NOT DRY SANDING, and I DO NOT recommend ANYONE with no wet sanding experience to try and do so. If you pay a professional to do it and your clearcoat fails in the future, you have a recourse. If YOU do it and your clearcoat fails, you have a paint shop to pay. With that said, 1000-grit sandpaper is GOD AWFUL AGGRESSIVE, and will require a decent polisher (like the Flex-3401VRG or similar), along with an aggressive COMPOUND (like the 3M Rubbibg Compound), in order to remove that sanding damage. The PC-7424XP is NOT going to fully remove 1000-grit sandpaper damage. Using 1000-grit sandpaper is going to eat up some clear coat VERY fast and strikethrough can easily happen, especially if you don't know what you are doing. Add to that, they don't put enough clear-coat on the Z to be experimenting on one without knowing what you are doing. I've worked on a few so I have firsthand experience with the lack of clear that they use.

1500-2000 grit is all that I would have tried on a factory painted Z, going slow as I go and paying close attention to how much clearcoat that I am removing. Since I would be WET SANDING, I can easily see how much clearcoat I am removing. Since the stripping is ON TOP of the clearcoat, you are going to want to remove THE LEAST amount to NONE of the clear coat that is on the car, as clearcoat is the LAST thing you want to cut off the car in this situation. You want as much of that stuff to remain on the car as possible for obvious reasons.

This is why you pay a professional to do professional type work. In the long run, paying someone to fix something like this is a hell of a lot cheaper than painting the entire car, which is what you will have to do if the clearcoat fails in the future.

We all like being able to work on our cars but some things, like rebuilding the transmission is something I won't screw with no matter how good someone's instructions are. Hell, I have the dealership service manual to my car, which clearly explains how to fix EVERYTHING on my car and there are still plenty of things that I won't try. Advance paint maintenance takes instruction and experience. You start on a hooptie, not your Z.

So if you want my advice, let a professional remove those stripes, if you can find someone bold enough to do so. Good luck with that though because when you tell them that you've already started the process, they may shy away. If they do, thank them because that's a sign of someone who doesn't want the future of your clearcoat on their hands or they are too lazy to do the job without painting the entire car, which is probably what a dealership would tell you.

Whatever you do, don't take it to a dealership. :barf:

Da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na JUNKMAN!

Lol! You silly! :)

Thank you for this! As a side note with the small areas I wet sanded, I used a small strip with light pressure for no more than probably 5-10 seconds until the paint was gone if that's any recourse. I am going to look for a reputable autobody/paint shop near me and see what they can do though.

Wet sanding is an artform and you only get one chance to screw it up. I've done quite a few videos on wet sanding, here's just one. The key here is MY TECHNIQUE. The products that I used were products that the car's owner had sitting in his garage. So don't get caught up in WHAT I used, pay close attention to HOW I used the items that I used.

TECHNIQUE TRUMPS PRODUCT 24/7/365.

I have a lot of guys who want a product list when I could have used a hundred different products that they probably already have sitting in their garage so keep that in mind whenever you see me break out a buffer because there are multiple brands out there that will take you to Shineville and I am NOT a product snob. Learn how a product works (the science behind the product, SMAT, DAT, etc...), and then learn how to use that product. If you understand how a product works, then you can pretty much pick up ANY similar product and get the same exact results. This is why you see me using so many different brands in my videos. You don't have to pay some jacked up price for one product when a similar product that cost $10 less will do the job just fine.

Here we go!