There still seems to be a lot of interest in this topic so I thought that I would provide an update on my work with this material. My 56 F100 is currently "riding the pine" while I finish my 40 Ford coupe. I have the 40 body on a rotisserie and have just finished applying bedliner to the underside of the floors. While I had the body flipped over I noticed how crappy the underside of the roof looked...old asphalt glue and felt stuck to some partially rusty metal. I took the whole roof area down to bare metal and coated it with Rust Seal. I then applied my homemade thermal barrier coating (aka, Lizardskin) to a small area to test the adhesion.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how durable the "new" recipe was and how well it adhered to the Rust Seal. The first picture below shows the test area after I had thoroughly scuffed it with a stainless steel wire brush...no flakes and no adhesion loss.
The second pic shows the base paint I used in this recipe...after reading the label I was convinced that this product would perform much better than the standard exterior latex that I had used in the past.
The third pic shows the inside of the roof after the application of the coating. After this dries it will shrink a bit and lose most of the gloss. Next step is to apply some Dynamat and then a layer of noise suppressing foam and the roof will then be ready to upholster.

 

Charlie,
I was poking around online a year or so ago and had read several articles on homemade lizardskin products. I think I even stumbled upon a source for the lizarskin additive. I think the additive is mainly little glass microspheres. I thought I had saved the links, but I'll be danged if I can find them.


The roof looks great
Bobby

 

Yeah Bobby, the material that you spray is basically a mix of ceramic microspheres and paint. The microspheres can be procured at a variety of sources, just be sure to get the HOLLOW spheres/balloons and not the solid variety. The ones that I use have a 10:1 ratio of interior space vs wall thickness. The air in the spheres holds the temperature at a stable level and is slow to change...kinda like the ***** in Styrofoam.

 

Very cool


Great info, thanks

 

CharlieLed,
Did you buy a special gun to shoot your home made Lizardskin? Looks great!

 

The first job I did I bought the special application kit that is marketed for Lizardskin. The kit came with the gun pictured above and a stirrer and a hose setup where you can draw the material directly from a large bucket rather than filling the quart cup over and over again. I have always used the gun...the added effort of filling the gun repeatedly is worth the added control and flexibility it offers.

 

Here's the additive I'm going with on mine.

Insulating Paint Additive Makes Paint Insulate

 

Yep that is the stuff...HyTech also sells a thinner that works much better than water. I don't use a lot of it but every now and then it does come in handy.

 

Cool. Yeah, that looks familiar, I'm betting that's what I stumbled on way back when.
Interesting stuff


Thanks
Bobby

 

Charlie, I purchased my micro balloons from Wicks Supply. Apparently they're used as an aggregate in the fillers used in model aircraft construction. The paint I used was a gallon of miss tint exterior latex from the local lumber yard. I mixed my HMLS to about peanut butter thickness and brushed it on instead of spraying. I was able to brush it every where without getting it where it shouldn't be. Over that, I used two layers of peel and seal from Lowes roofing department. Similar to dynamatt, it's far cheaper. Several have said the peel and seal stinks and melts when hot. Not so. Parked in the sun, windows up and over 100 degrees, my low cost alternatives work fine.

 

I have used the Wicks Supply product as well...works well and seems to be lighter in weight than the HyTech. As with many things these days, it's the marketing that sets the price/demand and common sense is in short supply. Good stuff...

 

How much difference does it make in interior temperature?

 

How does this homemade stuff work for reducing interior noise? I would like to quiet the interior of my panel; which is quite noisey

Thanks

 

2 coats will give you a 40% reduction in heat transfer...this means that if the roof of you truck is at 100 degrees, the inside surface would be at 60 degrees. Pretty significant.

 

There are two separate issues involved with interior noise; one is the noise that comes from outside the cab and the other is the noise that is reflected within the cab. In either case a thermal barrier coating provides little attenuation of noise.