A little of topic.
Is there easy ways to strip of powder coating.
I have a lot to remove.
This this to have a colour change. Just recoating add's to the over all thickness which is no good.
Hoping you get some ideas here, since I'm doing quite a bit of 'this' heavily reconfiguring a powdercoated chassis. Mine's been
powdercoated really well, really very well. Underneath the pigmented coat is a phosphor grey etch/primer coat, equally tough. My experiences:
OK, solvents don't touch it. Acetone, Xylene (and -ols), Toluene, Hexane. Some pigment loss with acetone, but thats about it.
A heat gun and a scraper will clear small welding areas. Get the powdercoat hot, but not burning hot/gooey, so it becomes plastic. Maintain a waft of
hot air while you get under the pigmented coat with a scraper, work it along. Allow to cool, the phosphor coat that remains can then be abraded cold
(sand paper). Quite a nice task in the winter, cold garage, bottle of Australian red.
A wire brush on a grinder seems to smear the stuff everywhere, it just wont 'go'.
Complete (easy) removal involves taking it back to the powdercoaters who will (apparently) heat the thing up and blast the coat off. I have no
experience of this.
Should you decide (after too much Australian red) to get out the blowtorch and just burn the crap off (yes, this does work - particularly useful when
removing/welding tight internal corners) - burning produces all sorts of nasty cyano/NCO-compounds which will hydrolyse in your lungs to produce
unpleasant effects.
My previous experience (many years ago) of powdercoat was one of the (well-known) year of powdercoat problems at Westfield. Thankfully, it all came
off like snake skin. Hope yours does.
acid dip it.
Get it blasted. It'll remove all the crap and prepare the surface for the new coatings.
Thanks guys
Great thread - the powder coat is coming off my fury in lumps (from Mark Fisher's days) and it's prompted a full strip and rebuild (and of
course a massive brace of modifications to boot).
The current advice from the FurySportscars is to get a zinc powder coat done as a first stage which gives great resistance to corrosion, then apply a
colour coat on top.
What it means to me is every hole needs either welding closed if not needed, or a screw putting in to seal it before coating. Again, according to
Steve, if you don't seal every hole you could end up with a lot of grit in a chassis member (as in full of grit) and there's no sane way to
get it out. Thinking about it, microfine grit blasted at a hold at 100psi is definitely going to go in there in large quantities.
Try nitromors, it worked for me...
Did mine a couple of years ago using Nitromors and some stripper from Screwfix. Make sure you get a decent pair of gaunlets and use eye protection. After stripping my chassis was shot blasted to prepare for painting, the shot blaster told me that blasting powder coating off doesn't really work too well and better to strip it first. Have fun
Angle grinder with a flap disc GENTLY takes it off in seconds and preps the surface for the next coating. Lots of dust so wear a mask.