i have a 81 camaro and the person that i bought it from painted it yellow..and i dont know if he did it himself but whoever did was an amateur job because the trim around the windows was also painted..and i want to remove the paint on the trim to show the chrome..like its supposed to have..how can i do it without scratching the chrome? if i scraped it with a hard plastic thing, would that scrape it?

 

or can i use paint thinner on a brush and brush it along the trim being careful to avoid any splatter on the rest of the car? or can i use sandpaper? will that scratch the chrome underneath?

 

How thick is the paint? The safest way would be to remove the trim and hit it with paint stripper. If the paint is thin and you need to leave the trim on the car, you can use paint thinner with 000~0000 steel wool. Be sure to mask off the rest of the car well, use the thinner sparingly, and keep it off the car. And the trim is polished stainless steel by the way, not chrome. Cleaning up the trim with super fine steel wool will give it a decent shine, and you can finish it off with a good metal polish.

 

its not that thick, its pretty thin actually..i think only 1 coat, it looks pretty thin..thanks! but what would be the best way to mask off the rest of the car? i know you can use tape to mark the trim and stuff off when you paint but how would i mask the whole car?

 

You don't have to mask off the whole car, just the area adjacent to the trim. Use masking tape on the body butting against the trim. And as long as you don't plan on being real sloppy with the thinner, you can go with another row or two of tape beyond the first line. The tape will protect your good paint from you going "oops" with the steel wool, and from the paint thinner.