20 years ago, I've used Circa Paint and varnish remover on a Kona Stuff hardtail aluminium frame and like others have said, the paint just bubbled and lifted off easily. I then brushed it all over with steel wool, cleaned the aluminium properly afterwards and properly masked the threaded and press-fit interfaces. I sent it to a factory that was doing powder coating and they just ran it into their regular "white" parts batch (I could only choose between white, grey and beige).
The frame held up to a lot of dirt jumping and what I'd consider fairly hard riding (30mm over-forked too). At the time, it never occured to me that the paint remover or the powder coat uring temperature could have harmed the frame, but nowadays I'd check all of those details carefully before proceeding.
Still, I was much happier with my white frame than with the original translucent-fluorescent-yellow paint job haha!
Last edited by: martin on March 3, 2022, 9:03 p.m., edited 1 time in total.