Sunlliner with shabby exterior

[dianevuk]

hi wise folk
I am after advice on how to painting an old van. It's time for our old fibreglass Sunliner to be painted. We have had it for 6 months but it may not have been painted for years.

I have had some advice of how to prepare the surface - hire a hot water high pressure water blaster (as used to clean pavers) and this will soften the remaining paint and it should peel off leaving the gell coat which can then be painted using a marine paint (such as Perfection). This advice was from a very helpful boat repairer. Is he on the money ? He seemed very confident. An alternative suggestion was to use soda ash blasting - a couple of people thought this a great solution but one fellow warned me off it.
thanks for any help you can give me with this ...I'm sure this isn't the first time this has come up.
Diane

[atouchofglass]

Hi and Welcome Diana
Would not use a waterblaster and or soda blasting....
Not sure how the old dear would stand up to that sort of torture
They are very thin skinned

There has been other threads that cover this - just don't know where they are

From memory
Sunliners didn't have gelcoat and were painted instead
Some use paint stripper and then respray or roll on a new coat of paint

Perhaps Swellwilly, Brucenan, Humpty2, JBJ or other fibrefreaks could give you a more detailed idea

Welcome to the wonderful world of Fibreglass vans and Vintage vans

vintagecaravans.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=photo&action=display&thread=4665&page=4

A trully inspiring Sunliner is Swellwillys
Also JBJ's

vintagecaravans.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=photo&action=display&thread=1195&page=7


Cheers
Atog

[miaow]

Hi Diane,
I doubt a high pressure blaster would do much. I used scrapers, paintstripper, hand sandpaper and a sander. Anyway you look at it, it's a horrible job. Took ages. I didn't find that the paintstripper did anything to the fibreglass...

Beth