2 questions before I primer the cab.Waiting for it to stop raining long enough to finish sand blasting cab.First is when its all sand blasted do i paint right over the sand blasted metal or do I wash it with anything first? 2nd is the spots I cant get covered with primer like behind dash and inside kick panels is there anythig I came use to cover these areas?

 

These are really good questions! Painting is as much an art as it is a science and I'm sure you will get a lot of opinions.

But you made a couple of important points - rain..... You have high humidity levels and unless you are spraying a primer that is intended to react with, and inhibit rust - like Rust -o-leum, you will probably need to wipe down you bare metal with a metal conditioner JUST before you prime. These are acid based and will inhibit a flash rust coat on your metal much the same way flux inhibits it on copper before soldering.

DuPont sells this product and it's only a million dollars for a quart (maybe $30) and well worth it.

But also, I might wait until things dry out a bit to prime. Atmospheric moisture and its friend residual moisture are never good when priming and painting. Be sure to adjust (buy the correct ones) your reducers and dryers for high humidity

Also, unless you hve stripped or blasted away the paint coats under the dash, etc, they don't need to be recoated.

All bare metal DOES need to be not only primed but painted with a finish coat!

Guelph - just sounds muggy!

Good luck

 

Yes you have to do a good wipe down of the whole entire cab before priming with a prep solvent or a good paint thinner can work also. Then for your primer Dont go cheap use a epoxy primer you can find at any local automotive parts store or www.summitracing.com has most everything you need. Allot of people do all there body work on bare metal but i dont think it really matters after your body work use a filler/ high build primer and block till you get all your panels as strait as possible then lay down your paint to fully seal up the cab. If your going to take your time then use the correct stuff and do it right the first time. as for behind your dash and such i used POR-15 and i brushed it in all the hard to get spotts and then sprayed a under coating over that to totally water proof.

 

Before spraying any product, I always try to wipe down with a Wax and Grease Remover. There are many on the market. Some are solvent based and some are water based. On freshly blasted parts, I found this difficult since the surface texture was quite rough and would continue to snag the cloth rags I was using. Once parts are blasted, we are careful not to touch any of the parts with our hands. Use clean cheap cloth gloves and throw them away once dirty. Try to get a coat on the freshly blasted parts as soon as you can.

After the blasting, I sprayed all parts with 2 coats of an epoxy primer. I really like the epoxy primer sold by Southern Polyurethanes. Their epoxy sprays well and can be sanded after about 16 to 20 hours. Other epoxy primers tend to ball up when sanded. You can find Southern Polyurethanes on the web. I tried to spray all clean metal surfaces with the epoxy including behind the dash and kick panels. If I could not get my spray gun in because of the close quarters, I would follow it up with a coat of Rustoleum from a spray can. I even poured Rustoleum down in the cavity formed by the kick panels by the door pillars.

I have a friend who does restorations professionally and he passed on a good thought to me... He said "it is almost impossible to completely eliminate and stop all the rust in these old vehicles, so with a lot of work our goal is to try and slow it down as much as possible!"

Here are a couple of pictures of the cab after several months of metal work, epoxy primer, filling, sanding, primer/surfacer, and more block sanding. Also the last picture shows the first step at a basecoat/clearcoat before color sanding and buffing. It is a long process, but worth the effort you put into it so good luck!

Fred

 

Very nice work..

Sam

 

In the very small chance that you have a large company nearby which make stuff with sheet metals and they are friendly, like trucks, or want to make a few bucks; you could try to use their acid baths to soak the whole thing to clean it, dry it and prime it like ford probably did 57 years ago. I *think* that would be the ultimate, and rust makes me angry.

 

very nice job!

 

Thanks for the info. I hope my cap looks like that shortly. It a great day here today but I am stuck at work. Figures!! Abd its a holiday weekend

 

It was either "Trucks" or another show on Spike TV where I first saw this product, Picklex20. It is a one-step metal prep that prevented rust on their bare metal project for years. They welded right over it as well as primed without further treatment. Looked pretty neat.

Website: http://www.picklex20.com/

 

Por-15 also has something like that and its called metal ready. Its really good stuff! i used it on all the parts i got after the sandblaster. it actually disolves rust and promotes adheasion plus it helps out with welding rusty metals.