Tools & Fabrication - un-painting an ugly blue alum. oil cooler - HOW TO

Well for starters I never knew why they painted some oil coolers blue, or any other weird color for that matter, except blue seems quite common. Im in the process of trying to remove that crap off two of my oil coolers that sit at the fog lamps and are visible from outside on a rather velocity red Z06, so it kinda sucks.

I dont know if those coolers are painted, anodized, powdercoated (i dont even know what im saying) all I want to do is get that crap off the coolers and have them in their natural color, that would probably help them function better too.

oil coolers are aluminum, any ideas?

You need to know whether it's anodized or painted.

I stripped the blue anodized finish off my fuel rails
using Easy-Off oven cleaner. I masked all the holes
with aluminum HVAC tape so the injector bores and
pipe threads wouldn't get etched. Took less than
15 minutes for the blue to end up in the foam and
off the base metal. You can always repeat if it is
not quite done.

yep oven cleaner works wonders with getting anodizing off.

how about paint?

how about paint?

Aircraft paint remover in an aerosol can from most auto parts stores works wonders...