Floor Boards - Please give me your opinions!

[Nissanman]

What is the best or preferred way to strip down the paint to get to the bare metal

I personally feel that Automotive Paint Stripper is the safest and most effective.

Sure, it is messy, but if you use a lot of newspaper or a painters disposable dropsheet to catch any fallout and leave the scrapings in a cardboard box or similar, it is reasonably easy to do.

Make sure you wash the panel down well with water to neutralise the remaining stripper.

I use a variety of scrubbing brushes and a bucket of warm water with a dose of de-greaser after neutralising to remove any stripper trapped in cracks and crevices.

Any form of abrading will create dust, heat and such, which I feel is undesirable.

There is no way that abrading will get into those areas that the stripper can.

[xray]

As a counterpoint....

Using stripper is good for outside panels but may prove problematic for inteior surfaces, particularly given the nooks and crevices of the floorpans near the seat mounts. If stripper isn't fully removed, it will adversely affect whatever coating you choose to use. You may find it better (at least more fun and less toxic) to get some 3M 4" stripping wheels and attach them to your drill and have a go with that. They are cheap, safe and effective...

In re: POR-15...lots of info on the site, so searching will be helpful. Here's the exec summary:

Wash the surface with a degreaser.

Rinse.

Soak the rusty surface with a weak phosphoric acid solution (Ospho, Metal Ready, etc) for as long as you can stand (at least an hour is my general rule).

Rinse.

Dry the surface (I use a heat gun to make sure all parts were dry).

Apply POR-15 according to directions.

Because POR-15 isn't designed specifically as a topcoat, apply primer at the correct interval (I used POR's primer to ensure compatibility).

Good luck, and have fun getting dirty.

Steve

[AWC]

I have used both chemical paint stripper and the 3M Clean/Strip wheels on a drill. Both work well and I recommend using stripping on large flat surfaces, because it will remove the most paint the fastest. But given my experience I'd use the Clean N Strip wheels in this application. They remove paint quickly but won't damage the underlying surface. It will be dusty, though. Make sure you get wheels with a metal arbor, as for some reason they make them with a plastic one--I got a batch of those one time and they just broke off in my drill when I applied pressure, which was a big waste of money.

[AggieZ]

The floorboards in my Z are in better shape, but if I was to have them replaced, what should I expect to pay?