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I am doing a clean up/restore on a Victor C-45 4 door cooler and need some advice on touching up the paint around the recessed kick plate area.  This cooler is for my use only and I just want to clean it up the best I can.  There is a lot of paint chipping around the kick plate area and so I wanted to at minimum just repaint this area.  It came in black and is a separate piece of metal then the body so I don't think painting it will be that hard to do.  Again, this cooler is just for me so it does not have to be perfect.  My question is how much time and effort do I spend on prepping this area to be painted.  I don't have access to a sand blaster and am not going to try to bring it somewhere to get it done (it weighs around 770lbs).  So I thought about maybe using a paint stripper such as Aircraft Remover (I read several articles on the discussions about this) or something similar.   My other option is to just sand it the best I can and repaint it.   Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.  If I go with a paint remover, what do people use?   As always, thanks!!!

If you can just sand the area and get it smooth enough to prime and paint will probably be the best way to go.  If you decide to use a paint remover I have used aircraft paint remover, but be careful not to get it on any other surfaces.

The hard part of body work is the prep if the chips are deep (more then one layer) strip it. I used a house paint stripper on my machine. It worked well not that bad of a smell and sells every where. http://www.homedepot.com/p/Citristrip-1-Qt-Safer-Paint-and-Varnish-Stripping-Gel-QCG73801T/100208204 (http://www.homedepot.com/p/Citristrip-1-Qt-Safer-Paint-and-Varnish-Stripping-Gel-QCG73801T/100208204)

      If the paint is already chipping off, there is a good chance you could take a razor blade and finish it off.

Thanks for all the responses.  I tried my orbital sander on it just to try it and it did a pretty good job of smoothing things out.  It did not take it all down to the metal, but made it pretty smooth which will work for me since it is only the recessed kick plate.  Thanks again.

I used this lately and it really took the paint off quick.  It went to bare metal and made less mess than with the sander. It makes a lot of heat if you leave it in one place to long but you get used to it pretty quick.

Good luck

http://t.harborfreight.com/4-in-shaft-mounted-polycarbide-abrasive-wheel-60510.html

krovel, thanks for the reply.  I have only used my sander on the short sides so maybe I will try your thought on the long sides.

no problem, you may know already but they also make thise pads for an angle grinder. i hear it works much better but I am pretty cheap so i just used the one for my drill.
good luck with your sanding job.  post some pics i'm curious how it turns out