Powdercoating anyone?

[Don B.]

I've recently gotten into it at home partly because of how crazy they charge to do it for you and how cheap it really is to do. Doing a lot of the small parts on my truck resto.
Parts like frame support gussets, hood hinges door hinges, battery tray, calipers and more. Anyone else in here do their own?

 

[Don B.]

Nobody?

 

[JoeM(GA)]

Don, I do some, I enjoy it, just don’t have the time a lot of days, does make a great finish!
Here’s a Power King I’ve been working on for a while

PowerKing Powder Coating

 

[Welding man]

I have had zero luck with powder coating. I have built truck beds, handrailing, fancy gates and other small pieces that customers wanted powder coated. None have held up after a year or two. I am not a fan of powder coating. We have a large facility near me that sand blasts and powder coats about anything and they are very reasonable. It looks great when new but, check it out a couple of years down the road.

 

[Mike(NEOhio)]

I haven't seen anything powder coated that didn't start peeling after a couple of years. Looks great at first. Where I worked they went to powder on all the sheet metal and had lots of problems. Took a good while to work through them. Surface prep is critical. I think the main reason for companies to switch to powder is the cost of environmental regs on solvents and waste from spray booths.

 

[showcrop]

I haven't seen anything powder coated that didn't start peeling after a couple of years. Looks great at first. Where I worked they went to powder on all the sheet metal and had lots of problems. Took a good while to work through them. Surface prep is critical. I think the main reason for companies to switch to powder is the cost of environmental regs on solvents and waste from spray booths.

You are right. So it would make no sense for them to switch to powder coat and keep priming, so of course there is no priming either.

 

[Don B.]

I know I've seen it peel off on sheets especially on things like ariens snowblowers.
But several years ago I bought an ariens GT and snowblower attachment that had been victim to a barn fire. I parted the tractor for all that I could salvage and I dismantled the snowblower attachment as far as it would come apart and had it blasted and powdercoated. 8 years later it still look like new.

 

[Don B.]

Some of what I've done
All of this is going on to my 83 Dodge d250 that I currently have apart to a bare frame

 

[showcrop]

Powder coat has its place. I have gotten parts for tracors as well as my antique roadster coated. But if it gets scratched to bare steel, the coating becomes a protection system for the rust at work. It holds moisture in so that the rust travels much faster than under paint with primer.

 

[m16ty]

I have had zero luck with powder coating. I have built truck beds, handrailing, fancy gates and other small pieces that customers wanted powder coated. None have held up after a year or two. I am not a fan of powder coating. We have a large facility near me that sand blasts and powder coats about anything and they are very reasonable. It looks great when new but, check it out a couple of years down the road.

At my day job we bought a new Landoll trailer in 2017. They powder coat all their trailers. Today (if we wash it) it looks as good today as when it left the factory. Hard as nails and no flaking.
If you’re having problems with powder coat I’d say it’s an issue with the person not doing it right or a bad powder coat product. The materials and process Landoll uses is much better than regular paint.

 

[Welding man]

At my day job we bought a new Landoll trailer in 2017. They powder coat all their trailers. Today (if we wash it) it looks as good today as when it left the factory. Hard as nails and no flaking.
If you’re having problems with powder coat I’d say it’s an issue with the person not doing it right or a bad powder coat product. The materials and process Landoll uses is much better than regular paint.

Landoll must be the only one doing it right and all the other trailer manufacturers and truck bed companies are doing it wrong. I work on all this stuff every day and 3 years down the road, I don't care who manufactured it, it all looks like it has been through a war zone. Customers constantly ask me what they can do with this mess. I say get it sandblasted and painted.

 

[stevieb49829]

Would powder coating hold up on an aluminum carburetor body? I'm thinking of experimenting doing my 3 deuces on my hotrod. steve

 

[Don B.]

I've seen it done but it's tedious. You have to take them all apart and be very careful about keeping the powder out of where you don't want it.
And yes I've seen powder peel off in sheets before but I've seen powder hold up well where nothing else would.
There are powder primers you can use, I haven't yet.... I'm just getting into this myself.
But starting with CLEAN base metal goes a long way. As does pre baking some parts. Especially those that have lived in grease/oil/brake fluid etc to burn the fluids out of the pores, and pre bake also helps if you have tight spots you want powder to get into.... In this case you definitely apply the powder while the part is still "hot"
inwhich case it's cool to see the powder "melt in".
I'm thinking powdercoating used on an assembly line where they're trying to jam as many parts out the door as possible probably doesn't have the best of prep. Like paint or any other finish powder only shows your screw ups beneath.
Like flash rust, old paint/powder, skin oil, mill scale, etc...
I like that you can put the part on as soon as it cools enough to handle. You don't have to wait as long for powder to dry, harden, cure. like you do with painted parts.
Yes this is a huge experiment in durability. I'll see if it works.
For the tree hugger types there's no VOC s or such in the air like there is in the left over over spray such as when. Painting.
Most available powders aren't badly priced and go a long way. Now some are. But so are some paints compared to others.

 

[m16ty]

Landoll must be the only one doing it right and all the other trailer manufacturers and truck bed companies are doing it wrong. I work on all this stuff every day and 3 years down the road, I don't care who manufactured it, it all looks like it has been through a war zone. Customers constantly ask me what they can do with this mess. I say get it sandblasted and painted.

I don’t know what to tell you, I know we have a 2017 Landoll and a 2020 Landoll, on both of them the paint still looks like new. Even underneath.

 

[Don B.]

Powder coat has its place. I have gotten parts for tracors as well as my antique roadster coated. But if it gets scratched to bare steel, the coating becomes a protection system for the rust at work. It holds moisture in so that the rust travels much faster than under paint with primer.

Well I might have to watch parts like my battery tray, disc brake shields and gas tank straps but I'm not worried about parts like calipers or spindles or the pitman arm or even the hood hinges rotting away even if left bare.... There's some meat to those haha and the front end parts came bare from new so anything I do to coat them can't hurt.....
One reason I'm coating these parts instead of painting is that my garage is packed and there really isn't much I can do to protect much of it from over spray. With powder I don't really have to worry about that.... I haven't gotten some of the exotic expensive powders, mostly standard basic type colors so far (no translucent, or "chrome" etc... yet at least).
Especially as compared to what I was quoted for only a portion of what I've coated to "have it done for me" even including buying a cheap oven plus the powder gun and the powder it's turned out much much cheaper to DIY.
I already have a blast cabinet and "overkill" compressor//// at least as far as what's needed for power coating for years, before I started doing powdercoating.... Those definitely weren't bought "just for this job" like the powder gun and oven were.... As I've gone along I've "found" more and more parts that I've coated that I was gonna either paint or just leave bare.
I have a thread elsewhere here on the forum (classic trucks" section) about what these parts I'm coating are going onto.

 

[Don B.]

And now if I have to redo some of the "thinner" parts like the battery tray down the road I already have what I need for it, not gonna have to go rebuy anything down the road.
And I have plenty of extras of most of the "thin" parts that would be most likely to have a problem with rusting out for "worse case"...

 

[showcrop]

I don’t know what to tell you, I know we have a 2017 Landoll and a 2020 Landoll, on both of them the paint still looks like new. Even underneath.

It appears that the difference may be in as they say "size of sample". Your's is two, welding man's maybe 200.

 

[john in la]

Proper preparation

Without an acetone clean and sandblasted rough surface powder coating ain’t gona stick.

Powder coating might not have overspray but the electric gun application and oven curing makes it a challenge for the garage hobbyist to apply correctly.

 

[JoeM(GA)]

Would powder coating hold up on an aluminum carburetor body? I'm thinking of experimenting doing my 3 deuces on my hotrod. steve

Stevie, most powder cures at 400-425 degrees for depending on the part and powder around 40-60 minutes or more to get full cure. I’m not real sure about a precision aluminum cast part going through that. And a lot of impurities to get out of the pores to make it bond correctly

 

[Don B.]

Some powder is lower temp, just have to look at the exact stuff you're using I've seen pix of carbs done on another site I've talked about this on