As a handful of you know, I had my Tiger 1A painted Deep Canyon Red a
few years ago (it's a Ford Ranger color, very close to Don Whitely's car
color).
In the process of doing body work, I purposely masked off the VIN plate
before the color coats were applied. I didn't want to remove the
original rivets.
Don't you know when I picked up my car at the painters, someone had
removed the masking tape, and the plate was painted over.
I won't tell you what I told the painter when I discovered this, but
this is what I did to remove the paint. I used, very gingerly, an
industrial razor blade to chip away minutely at the plate. The plan is
to get the paint to chip, as opposed to sliding the blade on the plate,
thus putting in scratches and possibly removing the lettering that's
stenciled on.
It's time consuming and, no, it isn't the same as whacking the painter
on the side of the noggin with a breaker bar if he even thinks of
removing the tape, but it makes the best of a bad situation.
If any of you are contemplating having your cars painted, and farming
out the work, you, if not the painter, will be happier with the result
if you spell out for them what you expect. This might mean leaving on
the VIN plate, and masking it, and telling the painter to leave the
farging tape on it. In my case, I would much have preferred to leave the
1/4 glass frames on the doors and paint around them. The painter removed
them, breaking off screws and losing hardware in the bargain, and they
are time consuming to re-tap and reinstall.
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