i was wondering would it be easier to use some kind of paint stripper versus sanding the entire car. trying to get some of the work done before it goes to the body shop. any advice on taping chrome etc.

you need to remove all the chrome anyway to even produce a so so job but to do a real nice job everything comes off. you can use stripper but it creates a big mess. you have to epoxy prime anyway so go ahead and use a 9 inch grinder with 80 grit disk and work one panel at a time or use a bondo buster giant da sander to do the same thing. after sanding primer then giude coat to find your high an low spots.

The problem I've had with strippers is getting it all out of the cracks and crannys before laying down primer. Its a sick feeling when your new paint forms bubbles a couple weeks later at the seams. I have used it but mainly to soften up spray on bed liners. On small jobs I prefer to use a DA Sander for the big ares and hand sand the difficult ones. Its time consuming and labor intensive. It also needs a pretty good compressor to keep up with the sander. For big jobs, media blasting saves lots of time and is most often farmed out. Last but not least, there is the process where the entire car is vatted. This requires the car to be disaasembed completely. Some professional restorers swear by this.

My suggestion is to talk to the folks at the Body shop. They probably would prefer that you leave it as is and let them do the job. It really is not going to save you much if any to strip the paint off. No matter what you do if the body shop is not confident in you and your work, and if they don't know you from Adam, then they won't trust your work they'll charge you to reblock and primer anyway which sets the base foundation for the top coats.

So I suggest that you go or call and talk to the people at the body shop find out from them what you can do to cut down some of the cost. It's possible that no matter what you do they'll re-do it. It is after all, their paint job, reputation and all and possible guarantee.

If we were doing that I wouldn't want the base coat from factory taken off unless it is just so bad it's not usable and I doubt that you have that type of rust and oxidation. But if that was the case I'd want to do that to assure good base adhesion.

Good luck