Powder coating SVX rims ( how hard can it be?)

[Chucksta]

So.. There are a few expressions that have made my life.... shall we say, interesting.

They are:

"What's the worst that could happen!"

" How much could that possibly cost? "

" This shouldn't take that long!"

" It can't be that hard!"

So in my infinite wisdom, I decided to pick the 4 worst factory rims I own ( out of 12 ), and powder coat them to match the burgundy paint on my '97. Little did I know what I was getting myself into

So, what's the first thing I'm gonna need? Something to get the old finish off the rim!

powder02.jpg

Now it would seem that Northern Tool isn't exactly "Ship to Canada" friendly, So I got pretty much the same thing at "Princess Auto" here in Canada, for about $100.00, Taxes in.

If you've never heard of or seen such a device, here's the ten cent tour:

Wet sandblasting uses the power of the water jet to accelerate the sand to increase it's abrasive ability, it keeps the working area cool, and minimizes dust. Theoretically, you just hook it up to your pressure washer, stick the pick up probe in a bag of blasting media, and rust, scale, powder coating, etc., just magically disappears with a wave of the blast wand... at least that's how they make it look on YouTube. They lied. ... Damn, did they lie!

Now let's add 3 bags of media to the shopping list. 3 fifty pound bags of ground glass, and we're out the door $60.00 lighter.

How much could this possibly cost?

So far, $160.00.

There's way more to come, but that's enough till tomorrow.

Of course, comments, questions, suggestions are more than welcome... especially suggestions..

[Chucksta]

And the first suggestion, I'm looking for is how to put a picture in a post so that it shows as a picture, not as an attachment..

[Sean486]

Open a photobucket account and upload your pictures. When you open a picture in your browser there will be "share links" on the right side. Click the one that says IMG. When you do this it will return a message that say copied. Go to your posting and paste in the link that it copied to your clip board.

Hopefully the blasting kit will be useful on other projects. For that price you could have probably had someone blast them clean.

[Chucksta]

@ Sean486.. Oh yeah, it'll get used for more than just 4 wheels. So far, it's done 2 sets of cast iron BBQ grills, Lawnmower deck, etc. It's a cool toy, just messy as hell.. Flat surfaces are a breeze, angled surfaces are, well, challenging, to say the least.

So now it's time to try out the powder coating kit that came in the mail. Over the last few years, I've become a student at Y&G university (YouTube & Google), so, a couple of hours of reading reviews, searching websites, forums. etc., I'm pretty sure I found one that will do the job. It would seem that a variable voltage output type is desirable, as smaller items need less voltage, larger items, need more. So do second coats ( clear coats ). I had no idea that something called the "Faraday cage effect" even existed. But now I at least understand how it affects the adhesion of the powder coat to the metal.

Variable voltage 25 KV to 50KV. Check
Air pressure adjustable at the gun.. Check
Comes with different tips......... Check
Pedal operated electrical switch.. Check

$300.00 later, well, if it comes out crappy, there'll be no blaming the powder coating gun.

But wait! If I'm going to powder coat, I'm going to need powder coat media. A couple of hours later, having kicked the crap out of Google, I come to the conclusion that there's nowhere that I can just walk into, pick a colour from a chart, and say "I'd like a pound of this, Please". Ounces and pounds are plentiful on Ebay, but the prices are steep, some places are charging an arm and a leg to ship to Canada, if they will ship at all. Some even want to charge to pre pay the Duty, of course, for a small service fee. Meanwhile, anything shipped to Canada, worth less than $50.00, usually doesn't get duty charged, as it's more expensive to process the payment than it's worth.

Now what to do? Get gouged and wait a week or two for the product to arrive, never having seen the colour with my own eyes, not on a monitor? Order and wait for a product that I've never felt the texture of? I think not.. There's one more unexplored avenue....

Lie! Lie like a rug! Suddenly I'm no longer just some putz looking to buy a pound of powder to re-do 4 esoteric rims! No! I'm now the President of a small powder coating company, looking to change my supplier! The first fish swallows the bait, hook, line and sinker! YES!

An hour later, I'm in the executive offices of a local powder coating manufacturer, getting schmoozed by the V.P of Marketing. Sweet! Some chutzpah, and a business card and I'm in! My only mistake? I brought my V.P of sales with me, my son. He instigated a brutal case of the "might as wells". "Well dad, if we're going to get this colour, why don't we get red, blue and green too? Then we can mix any colour we want." Well, it made sense, but it turned a 2Kg. "sample" into a 9 sample $180.00 order. For the purpose of this thread, however, I'll split the math into what I bought, and what actually gets used to do the four rims.


Now we need something to try it out on.. I figured the back handle of my trailer would look good in "Clear Burgundy"

[Blacky]

I can't wait to see the results on the rims, I have the same colour '97.

For shipping of stuff from the USA, you should consider The UPS Store in your nearest border town. For over 12 years I've been shipping everything expensive or with stupid Canadian shipping rates to The UPS Store in Ogdensburg, NY. I then do a combination pick-up, shopping trip to the USA.

Anything from out of state has no tax and you only pay the HST at the border. Very rarely they will charge 8% duty for tires which are not NAFTA. At The UPS Store you pay $5.00 per item picked up.

[Chucksta]

Now it would seem that you're not supposed to ever cook food again in an oven that's been used for baking powder coat. Off to the local Goodwill to get..


Another $20.00 into the project, and it's time to get at it.





The mouse.. capable of 100 PSI... eventually..



Powder coating box..




powder coating ( about twice what I'll need, and then some )

[svxcess]

Originally Posted by Chucksta

So in my infinite wisdom, I decided to and powder coat them to match the burgundy paint on my '97.
.

If you were going for an exact paint match in both color and gloss, I am wondering why you did not just strip the rims, use aluminum primer under actual color-correct automotive paint, and just seal it under clear powder coat. Doing a 2-stage like that preserves the metallic sparkle, as the metallic is set and doesn't flow and sink to the bottom. It makes it easier to duplicate if you are only doing one wheel at a time in a small oven.

It also gives you the advantage of painting the center caps to match with a clear acrylic top coat. That is what was done to my original OEM wheels HERE

In large commercial powder coating ovens, the temperature is more precisely controlled, as many wheels and other parts cured at the same time, using heat and convection to evenly distribute air flow.


Look at this website for interesting effects and ideas. http://www.liquidpowdercoats.com/old...e/gallery.html


Their new website is HERE

According to their current prices, 2-stage (metallic base and clear top coat) is $97.50 each if wheels just need to be stripped and redone, no repair, welding or curb rash.



Although every company is different, here is their method of wheel prep for powder coating. http://www.liquidpowdercoats.com/old...wheelprep.html

Basically a hot chemical stripper bath to "melt" and remove all factory or aftermarket finishes (even powder coat). Then mild media blasting (no sand), followed by an Iron Phosphate coat to prevent corrosion and improve powder adhesion. This is also what Transwheel did with my wheels.

.

[Chucksta]

@ svxcess.. Excellent points.. I maybe should have used a word other than "matched", when describing the finish I was looking to get.. More accurate adjectives would have been "complementary", "accentuating", or simply "looks good with". I wasn't necessarily looking for the rims to look like they were done with the same paint as the body.

The concept of an aluminum primer that would withstand the required temperatures to cure powder coating and a clear coat is something that I hadn't looked into. Most of the stuff I read said that paint had to be removed from the item, as it would just pull ( flake up ), from the heat when you went to cure the polymer coating. The Clear Burgundy that i'm using cures at a relatively low temp, compared to other finishes, so I'll definitely have to look into that combination for a finish.

It's obvious at this point, the opinion of the V.P. aside, that I either need to get the rim to an absolutely uniform state of finish, or coat it prior to the Burgundy going on. To match the center caps, that can't be baked, to the final finish just doesn't seem likely. I'm probably better off just taking the wire brush on the end of the die grinder to them and going with a gloss black.

Personally, I didn't mind the shading on the spokes, up to a point. But, that point was not controllable in the application process, not by a long shot.


I've got at least another day of rain, so nothing is going to happen outside till after then. At least with the rim cleaned, a rebake is only a thirty minute job. Permatex Gasket remover means a clean rim is less than 20 minutes away. this "oops" is, realistically, only an hours setback.

So, I can tell.. Ya all really didn't like the funky look of the rims.. LOL.. They've gotten a 2 for 2 thumbs up from the "under 25" crew.. Kinda like in "Back To The Future", when Marty McFly, goes Van Halen on "Johnny B Good".. The crowd starts dancing when he starts, but then grinds to a halt when he starts doing double tap hammer ons.. His parting comment? You're not ready for this, but your kids are going to love it/..

I absolutely agree that they should show a solid finish, no flaws whatsoever. That was the objective. But it was definitely a surprise to see the difference of opinion of the "oops" finished product, based on age.

If anyone reading this has a resource / algorithm / educated guess as how to compute curing times based on weight as it affects curing time on a per pound basis, please give it up.. I've seen some of the brain power on this site turned towards finding solutions to other issues, reverse engineering of Subaru programming, etc., some of you guys occasionally give hints as to owning skill sets that you don't exactly brag about. Nows the time to unleash the beast...post it! . The chances of you being more wrong than me are zero. If I have instructions, I'll follow them.. otherwise, it's "use the force Luke, use the force." So far, the results of that methodology have been less than exemplary. Lets's get a set of SVX rims being stripped, coated and looking crisp a slam dunk.

Thanks guys..

[Blacky]

In Quebec snow tires are mandatory by December 15th.

As for the rims..meh. Nota berry good to me. Sorry.

[Hocrest]

Just a thouught to stabilize the temperature of the oven. Use the upper element and line the bottom with fire bricks? Also is it possible to put a hook in the center of the ceiling of the oven to hang the parts?

[Chucksta]

Minor update...

Well, I hate to say it, but the rim I just did, although not what I wanted, grows on you.. It looks funky, and, like I said, the "under 25 crowd" ( my kid's buddies ), say do the other three just like that, just wet sand them before coating them.

Ummm.. no.. LOL.. That's not the look I was going for, so it's not the look I'm going to settle for. Limitations of the oven and timing issues aside, it's obvious that the oven is more than capable of baking the finish properly. It'll just take a bit of guesstimation on the curing time.

I'm going to take a whack at what kind of time is going to be required to get the bare aluminum of a severely neglected rim into pristine enough condition to coat and bake. If it's less than a couple of hours per rim, then that's the plan and it's game on! If, however on the other hand, it's going to be way worse than that, it's going to be rattle can high heat enamel primer ( like you'd use for an engine clock or similar high heat application), and then coat and bake. That will also give me the chance to see if my equipment will properly coat the final layer ( clear coat ) over primer and base coat.

Nice idea about fire brick.. Nice idea about the top element.. Nice idea about hanging the piece from the top of the oven... Trouble is, they are all pretty much exclusive.

If I use the top element, I'll need something to circulate the air in the oven. That means a high temp fan, which I don't have and have no room in the oven for. Years ago, I had an oven pooch out the lower element on Christmas Day, with a turkey in the oven. I switched to "broil".. Let's just say that the result wasn't what I had in mind. Heat rises, and with no forced circulation, Mr. Turkey didn't cook evenly... not even close. Fortunately, I usually just eat the white meat.

If I remove the top element, I'd have more clearance, but lose the ability to run both elements at the same time, which is something I should probably do when I put in something with as much heat load as a rim. Also, removing the top element and hanging the rim, would just transfer the heat imbalance from the radiance of the element from top and bottom to side to side. As I cure the rims "face up", it's the most invisible part of the rim that is ( possibly ) being over heated.

Fire bricks? Hmm .. that does present a couple of possibilities.. Take out the top element for clearance, and put the fire bricks over the bottom element to diffuse the heat, without losing the heating capacity of the element.. might be do- able, but I'll need to measure for total clearance. I've actually been using the top element as a hanging rack for small pieces I've done. It works well, is firmly screwed to the roof of the oven..

I'm going to be too busy to get anymore done for the next couple of days, but I've pretty well cleared off Sunday to have at it again.. pics of a science experiment ( hopefully not gone horribly wrong ) sometime Sunday night / early Monday morning.

Yeah... How hard can it be? Lol..

It hasn't been hard, but it's been educational and fun..

Thanks to all for the suggestions and links and support.

I still wish someone who can, would figure out how to accommodate curing times based on aluminum heat absorption per pound to ambient ( oven ) temperature as a curve.. I could do it with the temp gun as another science experiment, but I would've thought that somewhere, somehow, someone would've already known the answer, or, where to find that info..