23 Oct 2008, 14:24
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to pick your collective brain. I will be refurbishing my suspension springs over the coming months and I'm looking into possible options for coatings/finishes.
When I did the rear suspension on VIN# 4400 I had the springs professionally blasted at a place in Wolverhampton and then I used Plastidip plastic/rubber paint to paint the springs with a flexible black coating. My line of thinking at the time was that the rubber coating would be nice and flexible when the springs were back on the car. Sure enough, this seemed to work fine and on the whole I was pretty impressed with the Plastidip stuff. The only thing I didn't like was that the finish wasn't quite as 'smooth' and OEM-looking as I'd hoped it would be.
This time round I'm armed with that prior experience and I'm in a bit of a quandry as to what to choose. My initial thought was that if I painted the springs the paint would flake off when the springs travel up and down. Having said that, the original factory finish was just black paint (minus any primer of course :roll: ) and it doens't seem to be affected by spring travel?
My next thought was the powder coating route. I like the idea of powder coating as it would be a nice uniform finish and looks pretty much original. But I'm concerned that the heat from the oven would somehow distort or soften the spring. Does anyone know what temperature a powder coating oven usually runs at? And what sort of temperature is required to affect / screw up the spring's properties?
Or should I just stick to paint?
Cheers,
Phil
Just wanted to pick your collective brain. I will be refurbishing my suspension springs over the coming months and I'm looking into possible options for coatings/finishes.
When I did the rear suspension on VIN# 4400 I had the springs professionally blasted at a place in Wolverhampton and then I used Plastidip plastic/rubber paint to paint the springs with a flexible black coating. My line of thinking at the time was that the rubber coating would be nice and flexible when the springs were back on the car. Sure enough, this seemed to work fine and on the whole I was pretty impressed with the Plastidip stuff. The only thing I didn't like was that the finish wasn't quite as 'smooth' and OEM-looking as I'd hoped it would be.
This time round I'm armed with that prior experience and I'm in a bit of a quandry as to what to choose. My initial thought was that if I painted the springs the paint would flake off when the springs travel up and down. Having said that, the original factory finish was just black paint (minus any primer of course :roll: ) and it doens't seem to be affected by spring travel?
My next thought was the powder coating route. I like the idea of powder coating as it would be a nice uniform finish and looks pretty much original. But I'm concerned that the heat from the oven would somehow distort or soften the spring. Does anyone know what temperature a powder coating oven usually runs at? And what sort of temperature is required to affect / screw up the spring's properties?
Or should I just stick to paint?
Cheers,
Phil