Techniques to remove the underbody protection?
- Thread starter Chrome58
- Start date
"Simple Green" is simply a cleaner that happens to remove oily residue. "Oily Residue" is not quite what automotive undercoating is. There was a cleaner on HSN this afternoon which was cleaning off baked-on cooling residues from a kitchen stove door. Took two applications to get to the base finish on the door. Something like that might work! Don't recall the full name, but it ended in the numbers "66". and cost $39.95 USD/gallon. FWIW
To do things like removed undercoating, that was a somewhat common thing to do for serious drag racers in the later 1900s. Not an easy job, even back then. Laborious, too! To save about 50 lbs and get the additional vehicle performance that weight savings might accrue.
IF you want to remove undercoat, you need to use an oily chemical to soften it first! Just like using car clearer wax to remove "road tar". Put some oil on it, soften it, then scrape off better and easier. Maybe some spray-on penetrating oil? Spray, let it sit, spray more, let it sit, cycle repeat until it is soft enough to scrape off. DO put a oil-resistant tarp under the car first! Then covered with old newspapers to help ease the clean up activities.
Take care,
CBODY67
To do things like removed undercoating, that was a somewhat common thing to do for serious drag racers in the later 1900s. Not an easy job, even back then. Laborious, too! To save about 50 lbs and get the additional vehicle performance that weight savings might accrue.
IF you want to remove undercoat, you need to use an oily chemical to soften it first! Just like using car clearer wax to remove "road tar". Put some oil on it, soften it, then scrape off better and easier. Maybe some spray-on penetrating oil? Spray, let it sit, spray more, let it sit, cycle repeat until it is soft enough to scrape off. DO put a oil-resistant tarp under the car first! Then covered with old newspapers to help ease the clean up activities.
Take care,
CBODY67
3175375
Senior Member
I stripped the inner fender areas down to the original paint, leaving the grease pencil marks that the quality inspector made on the assembly line in my 1965 Mustang. The car hadn’t been touched inside there, except to collect road tar, grime, sand and dirt. I did this work back in 2000. Simple Green works!
Captainfury
Member
Thanks guys for all the help and suggestions which are very useful.
I’ve scraped and sanded the wheel arches and most of the underbody areas. The Fury is certainly in a better state than 12 months ago. Every day if I can achieve at least one fix up then I’m happy. Eventually she will be ready to roar again..
Captainfury
Member
I too found some yellow grease/wax pencil marks under the sand/grease/oil/deadener mix that built up over the last 50 years or so. Nice to see it and have it on show for originality purposes. I’ve actually developed epicondylitis( tennis elbow) from the daily scraping. Very painful. Like others have mentioned the total amount removed is more than expected- bucket loads. I’d say I’ve taken off 15 average sized buckets of crud so far and am about 85% done.
Detroit_Lives
Member
I've done this from underneath, the car the jackstands. Best way I found after trying several things; as mentioned multiple times in prior posts... propane torch with a small flame or safer choice heat gun. It doesn't take much heat if its smoking its too hot. Wave the heat across the area you want to scrape, wave it back and forth a couple times and it starts peeling off in one thick peeel at a time. Once in a while I wave the heat across the scraper but it gets hot already from the hot undercoating. Some areas practically fall off with a light swipe of the scraper and other areas where maybe its thicker or for whatever reason, you might have to muscle it more or maybe you have to work the blade sideways and work at it. In those areas I found that more heat doesn't help that much, just work at it. Another method I found that really works well is CitriStrip "safe" stripper. I've tried aircraft stripper, very strong, works well, but that stuff is wicked to work with! CitriStrip takes a couple applications but it does bubble up the undercoating. I use a 2 " wide metal "putty knife" scraper.
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