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nate
04-19-2005, 04:27 AM
Question, do I need to sand/grind off the black "mill scale" coating on steel to get the proper adhesion for paint, or is roughing it up some ok??

Swamp boy
04-19-2005, 08:51 AM
depends on if you want a nice smooth coat of paint...


I used aircraft stripper on my bumper ...Then I used a wire wheel to clean up what was left behind...

JeepinHank
04-19-2005, 10:06 AM
Usually I just rough it up really good and prime the snot out of it. Of course, if I'm going to be doing any welding on the metal, I get it shiny and bare, and usually wire wheel the entire piece while I'm at it.

Prepped and primed my x-members, belly skid, and sleeves this weekend.

On the sleeves, they had been sitting out in the shop for a while, so I ended up taking a wire wheel to them inside and out to clean off a little bit of surface rust. Then I blew them off and wiped them down with a solvent (Strip Kleen IIRC) to get any dirt or oil off of the metal. I let that dry and went back over it with a damp cloth to clean off any of the remaining solvent, and let it dry. After drying, I primed it with two coats of Rustoleum oil based metal primer. I used the clean metal primer - white stuff... Normally I buy the rusty metal primer - rust brown color, but I'm working with mostly new metal for most of my current projects.

After the first coat of primer, you'll probably be able to see your brush strokes and the metal may show through. The second coat seemed to smooth it out quite a bit and hide the brush stokes.

I primed inside and out on the sleeves. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I figured that with as much rain as we get around here, anything I could do in advance to prevent rusting will be worth it. I'll just go back and clean up the areas I'll be welding when I'm about to install everything.

On the x-members and skid, I pretty much did the same thing, excecpt I didn't take a wire wheel to it. I had a couple of rough spots from welding my cut out for the transmission mount, but those are the only places I did any grinding. I did use some sand paper between applications of solvent, but that's about it.

nate
04-20-2005, 04:47 AM
Nah, I don't care if it's smooth. Control arms and stuff like that.