In April 1974, I was driving my Series 1 to my second shift job (about 4:30 pm) near Xenia Ohio (about 20 miles away). All of a sudden, the sky broke loose with a massive downpour of hail that was hitting my Alpine so hard and so much that I had to pull off the road and park very close to a building's wall that shielded my car from that terrible hail. I thought for sure that my car's bodywork was peppered with small dents, but I guess I was lucky that the building was very near. That hail was the loudest thing I ever heard inside the car. It sounded like I was inside a metal trash can (I have the metal hardtop). Anyway, the hail was from a F4 (or something) tornado that wiped Xenia off the map. About 60 people died that night.....Pretty sad.
-- ********************************************** Jan Servaites Helmet Painting Technologist SSR Designs http://mall.turnpike.net/~servaijm
860000F6B0032FA46C7B(at)XS02LYNCSIGGE> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-alpines(at)autox.team.net Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Roger Gibbs <rgibbs(at)pacbell.net>
Christie, Scott E. (CAP, GEFA) wrote: > > Are there any chemicals out there that you guys have used to totally strip > this stuff out? > Scott Christie
As Curt and Rob pointed out lacquer thinner is effective at thinning tar based products, as are other petroleum based products. My .02 opinions:
1. certain solvents are good at disolving these substances, however this can be a blessing and a curse. Thinned tar is magically (it seems) more easily transported to your tools, clothes, garage, hair, etc much more easily than the original product.
2. Therefore I try to remove the bulk of the material keeping it as intact as possible for the first step. Using mechanical means (scrapers) I try to remove big pieces. Maybe heat as the second step, trying to find the right level of heat which softens (but not too much) the tar and then scrap away as much as I can.
3. As a final cleaning step I use a solvent and a scotch brite pad to remove the remainder of the tar. Doing this a couple of times might be effective.
4. I might try using a paint stripper to see if it softens this stuff (I have not tried it).
5. I have found that trying to use a solvent as the first step tends to make the job worse (more of a mess).
You decide what health precautions you want to take. Me, I use gloves and do this work outside and/or wear a respirator.
Have fun.
-Roger