Me: KITT are you whining?
KITT: No that would be undignified, but you did say that I would have high gloss wheel wells.
Me: Well, KITT, we cannot always have what we want in life. In case we forget that, there are always A-holes with paint skills out there to remind us.
KITT: I still get to be black, right?
Me: Yes, KITT.
After the paint fiasco that started off last year on a sour note, I had set out to determine the best course of action to remove the primer. I wanted to find a way to restore the wheel wells and underbody to the show ready finish they had before going in for paint. I was able to scuff off most of the primer from the underbody and then apply yet another coat of POR-15. I still have some touch up work to do in this area. The subframe connectors were not so easy and in fact trying to remove the primer destroyed the red powder coat finish. But that is all last's years news.
We tried to strip off the primer in the wheel wells and it was next to impossible to get off. What we were able to remove took enough paint stripper that it also damaged the POR-15 that was underneath. In thinking about all the time and money that we have put into just the wheel well areas in order to treat them with high gloss black POR-15, we just could not see starting over. We would literally be throwing away money.
We decided to use another POR-15 product called POR-15 Rubberized Under Coating. This is a spray on undercoating similar in texture to the normal undercoating applied by many auto manufacturers, but with the added benefits of POR-15 protection. It remains flexible, has superior resistance to road salt, and will resist chipping and abrasions.
There are two benefits going this route. One is that we will save all of the hard work and money already put into the treatment of the wheel wells and two, it will add sound deadening and help reduce road noise.
Here is the driver side rear wheel well. I intend to cover all of this with the under coating.
You can see where we attempted to remove the primer from the driver side rear wheel well.
Driver side front wheel well.
The front wheel wells are partially formed by these plastic inserts. The wheel well ends up being half metal and half plastic. We had originally coated these with POR-15 too so that it would have the same high gloss as the rest of the wheel well. These will also need to have the under coating applied in order to have a uniform look. The small piece at the bottom is the fuel filler neck shroud. This forms the rear part of the driver side wheel well and covers the gas tank neck. This is the only plastic piece in either of the rear wheel wells.
Tonight we ordered two cans of POR-15 Rubberized Under Coating and one quart of POR-15 Metal Prep from POR-15.com They have recently changed the names of two of the products we have used and mentioned quite frequently on Project: K.I.T.T. For future reference, MarineClean has become POR-15 Cleaner Degreaser and Prep and Ready has become POR-15 Metal Prep.
No comments:
Post a Comment