Painting a Factory Painted Shell.

I have an old Lima FP-45 shell that i would love to repaint, but I would like to know what the best way to do this is. Do I try and stip the factory paint (if it is possible even)? Or paint over it directly? Don’t want a patch job, the prototype I’m looking to model wasn’t patched. Any help/tips would be so cool.

Strip it then repaint it. There are several ways this can be done, just be careful not to use a solvent that attacks the plastic.