Restoration of old Tamiya Cars & Bodies

[sedge34]

I just wanted to ask a few people if they have any suggestion on how to restore the old lexan bodies of tamiya cars. I am in the process of restoring a couple of old cars, a Boomerang and a Falcon. I need to remove the paint from them without damaging the plastic, apart from using wet & dry sandpaper and slowly removing the paint by hand.

I have tried soaking a piece of an old plastic body with paint on in 'Cillit Bang', it did not even mark the plastic or touch the paint!

On www.tamiya101.com, there is a very good article on how to use Brake fluid to remove paint from ABS bodies, so I am experimenting with this to see if I get any results.

I also spoke with someone on ebay who had used a deep fat fryer to remove the paint from the body of a Falcon successfully. Details of his emails are below;

hi steve
thanks for your question.
i have found the best method of removing the old paint from shells to be too place the shell in a pre heated deep fat fryer on a high power setting for about 20 mins once you remove the shell you should find that the paint has completely dissolved and the shell will be so clear that you should find it difficult to see it in the fryer.
hope this helps.

hi steve
i found it to be trail error to begin with as i was leaving it longer than 20 mins and the shell was deforming a little but i have found that my delongi coolwall deep fat fryer is perfect for the job as it has an adjustable thermostat that give precise control of the sun flower oil and a 20 minute immersion time on the 50 degree setting is perfect.
if you are using a different deep fat fryer then i think you should do it on the chicken setting as this worked for a time for me with a kenwood model that i used previously but i found the immersion time to be best for a duration time off just 18 minutes.
hope this helps

If anyone has any ideas on this subject I would love to hear more, especially if they have successfully achieved it!

Steve