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I decided to buy the real deal: 5 litres of 99% pure dichloromethane. When it arrived, I realised:
this chemical is incredibly toxic and can't be done anywhere near my baby girl (only a few months old at the time)
it is way too thin (liquidy) and evaporates too quickly to actually stay on a surface of the bike long enough to react with the paint so it can be stripped off.Exactly my experience with the stuff, absolutely deadly if you accidentally breath it in.
So my solution was to cover the bike in rags soaked in the dichloromethane, and then wrap that in cling-film to keep the chemical on the surface of the paint as long as possible
Did think of this, but haven't had a chance to test it. How well did it work?
spotter-
Not amazingly if I am honest. In some larger surface areas it really did blister off the paint quite well so it came off with ease, but I think part of the difficulty was down to the colour changing paint. I have heard this tends to be thicker or something. In the end I had to rely rather heavily on the wire cup attachment to "brush off" the rest of the paint. This actually resulted in more abrasion on the aluminium than I had hoped for, but I should have probably foreseen this.
If I were doing it again I would probably try to find something to thicken the dichloromethane so it is like a gel (like nitro or something). Alternatively, for a few frames at once, creating a shallow bath dip and just giving them a soaking one after another could be a good approach (anyone want to organise a frame-stripping party? I still have about 4L left!).
Also note that gloves are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. I got some of this on my skin (through two pairs of latex gloves), and it was very irritated!
jdmitch
I am so glad my persistent begging has paid off, really happy to see the progress. We've all finished grieving for the frame now and I for one am excited to see how it works out. This could be @Polka_Dot aero helmet level of win (with less science and more bondo)