Tips to strip the top battery brackets?

[kallisti5]

Anyone out there have tips to strip off the rubber / plastic coating on the top battery brackets on the M1009?
They're peeling + rusting at the edges. I'm swapping the batteries and wanted to take a quick crack at repainting the tops with self-etch and giving them a cheap rubber bed-liner coating.

The factory plastic / rubber coating is a pain to remove though.. it is *STUCK* where it's in good condition. Just threw some aircraft stripper on it in a test spot to see if that would soften it any.

 

[98G]

Sandblaster...

 

[antennaclimber]

I have soaked a couple of sets in paint stripper using a disposable aluminum pan. It takes a couple of days to get it to soak in. After the majority of it was removed, I used a dental tool to pick the coating out of the interior corners prior to sandblasting and powder coating.

 

[kallisti5]

I have soaked a couple of sets in paint stripper using a disposable aluminum pan. It takes a couple of days to get it to soak in. After the majority of it was removed, I used a dental tool to pick the coating out of the interior corners prior to sandblasting and powder coating.

oof. ok. I was a bit naive thinking I could just peel + scrape it of it off and maybe torch any remaining bits. I'll plan to give them both a soak.

 

[nyoffroad]

Heat, use a torch and burn it off.
Just remove it from the truck first!

 

[kallisti5]

Heat, use a torch and burn it off.
Just remove it from the truck first!

It crossed my mind to just throw it into a burn pile... it's not load bearing or anything. In theory I could quench it and sharpen it too

 

[Keith_J]

It crossed my mind to just throw it into a burn pile... it's not load bearing or anything. In theory I could quench it and sharpen it too

It isn't hardened, quenched or tempered. Low carbon steel. A regular fire should be fine. Watch your wind, the coating shouldn't be PVC but might have a urethane component..that could give rise to HCN..that is hydrogen cyanide..PVC creates COCl, dioxins and other nasties.

 

[glcaines]

I burned off the rubbery/plastic coating on an M35A2 battery bracket in a fire. I tried sand blasting, but that didn't work so I went to fire. It burned off really well, but left crispy ash all over the steel and smelled terrible when burning - probably some carcinogens there so I left the area. I then very easily took off the crusty ash residue with a sandblaster. I then painted it with bedliner in a spray can. The final result was excellent. I then found and bought a stack of NOS battery brackets at a rally. I think I gave $10.00 for all 4 of the new brackets. The guy must have had around 100 or so. I wish I had found them before all the effort to resurrect the old one. I also sprayed bedliner on the battery bracket for my wife's Nissan Pathfinder. After ~10 years, the bedliner painted battery bracket on the M35A2 still looked like new and actually looked better than the NOS ones I bought.