1985 Hyaku Shiki - Stripping old paint off of a plastic model kit

Last post I was mentioning how I was trying to figure out how to remove the paint from my old Hyaku Shiki kit - I did some research on the net, and the top solutions seemed to be:

• Dettol, Isopropyll Alcohol, or Pine Sol - all of which are sold around.  Problem is, these seem to need some muscle work after soaking for a couple of days - takes too long, and I'm not sure how well the model will stand up to vigorous scrubbing
• Easy Off Oven Cleaner - Spray it on, scrub it off, but it wasn't clear about which type to use - the Aerosol can one or the manual pump one.  Sounded like it'd be more effective than the Dettol though.
• Brake Fluid - soak the model in brake fluid - apparently takes the paint right off, no effort, but is not easy to dispose of, and you have to be careful what plastics you put in it.  So I didn't risk it.
• Graffiti Remover, which can also be used on the model, sprayed on and as effective as the brake fluid. Also, these are billed as low odour and environmentally friendly.

So I tried the Easy Off which is easily obtainable:  After a couple days soaking in the aerosol sprayed version, (in a small plastic tub), I tried some scrubbing with a toothbrush and scraping with my thumbnail:

Subsequent soaking and scrubbing/scraping didn't really do much. I needed something stronger it seemed.

I managed to find a can of Graffi Remover from the local hardware store - I didn't know that this sort of thing was easily found, nice!  It was the Watch Dog brand Lift Away one that I picked up, and I gave it a good sprayover after testing it on a bit of the sprue on the side.  It took off EVERYTHING.  Wow this stuff was nice - I didn't even need to scrub that hard with the toothbrush, everything rubbed off like it was never attached.

I may have left in in there a little TOO long though - I was supposed to let it sit for a few minutes (fresh graffiti) so I figured I'd leave it in there a couple hours (20 year old paint) and I ended up leaving it for 24 hours till I next got a chance to clean it up.  Some of the color is stripped on the blue sprue sheet, but the plastic is undamaged, phew...

Really nice!  Ready for priming now!

Upsen.