A big thank you to everyone for the advice, we have finished now and pretty much all the crap is now gone. We used white spirit, petrol, nail varnish remover, paint stripper and gunk along with plastic paint strippers so as not to scratch anything and a hairdryer to heat up the stubborn stuff. It is now very much better I hope you all agree. By no means mint of course but good enough that I'm going to put it up for sale early next month at about 2500 but will list here at 2350 for a couple of weeks first. Ad to follow but here are a few pics showing the difference for now.
I have to say that I am really pleased with the results. It must have taken around 20 hours of work but it now looks like a nice 696 as opposed to some sort of mobile catastrophe. I had to buy a few bits but by and large just hours of work cleaning the parts.
If you quickly scan read huge pages, the title of this thread looks like, getting a giraffe off your bike
Hi everyone. Interesting read and great results, definitely better without the graffiti! I have a similar issue to remove splodges of anti-rust primer which have been daubed over and around calliper bolts and other fastenings. I found that a piece of sacrificial wooden dowel, sharpened to a blade then dipped in Cellulose thinners worked well to target the offending paint without too much impact to the component underneath. A solvent loaded scraper basically. Slow process but better than a strip and refinish. “Wanksy..” I’m still laughing.