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Painting Your Hot Wheels
You can really choose how hardcore you want to get into painting your Hot Wheels. You can go all out and treat painting your car as you would painting any other model, or you can just have some fun and throw some extra color on your cars. Here I'll try to present what is the best process for getting your cars ready to paint.
If you follow a different process that seems to work, please visit the Redline Racing Community and share your methods. This tutorial is by no means the "best" technique, it's just one that has worked well for me.
Materials
- (1) Can of Aircraft Remover paint stripper (get this AutoZone)
- (1) One quart jar or paint can
- (1) Coat hanger or bendy wire
- (1) Small wire brush
- (2) Smaller buckets for water
- (1) Can of car primer spray paint (the flat gray stuff)
- Acrylic or model paints (optional)
- Various painting supplies (brushes, etc.)
- (1) Can of clear coat spray (if using acyrlic paints)
Basically
Fill the quart jar/can with the paint stripper and let the Hot Wheels car soak in it for at least 15-minutes. Take it out, rinse it off, and scrub. Prime it, paint it. Done.
Stripping the Paint
WARNING: Always use gloves when handling the paint stripper. Find some latex gloves or something. Don't use your bare skin. This stuff removes paint like it's nothing, so it'll do the same to your skin.
The Aircraft Remover paint stripper is so far the best and fastest way to remove the paint from your cars, leaving only the diecast body. The stripper has the consistency of pudding.
Fill your quart jar/can up about half-way with the stripper and then take your car body (metal body, no plastic!) and hook it with a bent coat hanger. Then submerge the car body in the stripper and let it sit for at least 15-minutes. After 15-minutes, lift up the car with your hook and tap it on the edge of the can to remove the bulk of the ooze. You may also see the paint slide right off the car into the can, this is okay.
Then with the car body still on the hanger, dip it into a cup or jar of water (just tap water is fine). Wiggle it around to rinse off any left over paint stripper and paint flecks. Then take it and put it into a shallow bucket of water. In the bucket, take the wire brush and use it to remove any gunk that may be left in the cracks and any paint that has yet to come off. Then try it off and you should have a wonderfully clean and bare metal body ready for priming.
Preparing for Paint
With your bare metal car body all clean and dry it's ready to be ready to paint. With your can of car primer, spray the bare metal body and let it dry. With such a small car you may have to wait and re-spray it, but one coat should do the trick on such a small body.
Painting
Once the primer is dry you're ready to paint your car! You can use acrylic paints or standard model paint (oil enamel).
Model paint comes pre-glossy and is tougher than acrylic paint, but it's also less forgiving if you mess up and needs paint thinner for clean-up. Enamel paint also takes a while to dry. Acrylic paint requires a few more coats but is easier to work with, cleans up with soap and water, and doesn't ruin everything when you mess up. Acrylic paint also dries after about 10 minutes so you can go about paint faster. You'll also probably find far more colors available with acrylic than model paint, plus you can mix your own colors if you want.
The more-expensive acrylic paints (in a tube) go on better and thicker and present more vivid colors. The cheap bottle acrylics work but require several coats.
Clear Coating with Acrylics
If you used acrylic paints you'll need to spray your car down with at least two coats of clear coat. You can find the clear coat in any craft or hobby store. Just make sure it's rated for models, paint, and metal. It comes in glossy and matte finish, but eitherway you will have to spray down your car. Acrylic paint alone will scratch off very easily.
The shine from two good coats of clear coat on acrylic is about the same as the enamel gloss paint. But based on my paintings, neither one gets the car to the shine that the cars come with out of the box.
Thanks
I found this process at the Hot World Customs web site. They discuss other methods for stripping/painting.