An idea for cleaning our engines of rubbish paint- Acetone

Atticman · An idea for cleaning our engines of rubbish paint- Acetone

Came across this a bit by accident.

I recently got 2 Mamod accessories as part of a job lot that included an MM2 boiler. The bases though were a nasty green

The original green for the stands was fine, so rather than strip and possibly mess up the base of the stand I masked off the stand cleaned the base with meths to degrease after wirewooling the suface to help the paint stick.

But the primer started bubbling within 20mins of spraying on

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I then had a thought- the solvent in the primer is dissolving the base respayed paint

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At the end of the workshop is a bottle of acetone dad has had for years. hes used it as thinners for the air spray gun.

I soaked some in a kitchen towel and very quickly after a bit of elbow grease the red has returned.

I then had a look at my recently bought flatbase MM2. The ebay pic showed some grey stuff on it, but underneath is quite a lot of spilt grey paint.

I started off with the kitchen towel in actone and within a few minutes much was clear

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I am really pleased as the base seems otherwise pretty good, and so I will avoid a respray.
This may save some Nitromors and burnt fingers.

Before and after

A word of warning though is to leave the windows open as the acetone is quite smelly stuff

As the base and stand were stove enamelled the original mamod paint is not dissolvable

tmuir

I'll add Acetone is also very flammable but it did a great job in getting rid of that crap paint and is definitely worth trying should I buy a badly repainted engine. Nice tip.

Atticman

I think some rubber is soluble in acetone too Tony

Thus I will be washing the rubber feet quick

tmuir

bessytractor

good tip thanks for sharing

will add it to the rest of the random stuff in my head!