After many, many hours of painting. Here are pictures of the POR 15 Top Coat painted frame.
Frame Preparation
Prior to cleaning the frame, I spent about 4 hours grinding off the welding spatter and surface rust around the frame. I used my angle grinder and dremel to accomplish this. As per the POR 15 instructions, I used the Marine Clean to wash any of the grime off of the frame. After rinsing it off, I applied the Metal Ready Etch and let it dry overnight.
This is a picture of the unpainted frame. I ordered the frame unpainted from FFR. This gave me a $50 credit toward the purchase.
After much discussion with colleagues and asking Wade Linger for his take on POR 15 application, I decided to paint the POR 15 on to my frame. One of my co-workers who has a Porsche-Chevy project of his own threatened to shoot me if I painted my frame (instead of spraying it). I decided that I didn't have the skill sets (and proper equipment) to do it correctly so I opted for painting. Sorry Jim.
As you can see here the frame has a lot of surface rust on the square tubing sections. This is what I was afraid would be painted over had I opted for FFR to paint the frame. In defense of FFR, I did see some of the painted frames from the factory when I went to pick up the kit and they looked really good. I'm not quite done with the frame painting yet but with the level of effort involved in doing it yourself, I think that I would have had the factory paint the frame for me.
This is what the frame looks like after the Metal Ready etch dries. According to the manufacturer, this etch is a competent substitute for sand blasting or using an already rusted surface.
Since we were having thunderstorms today, I had to speed things up and did most of the drying inside my garage. I tipped the frame on it's side so that I could get any water out of the tubing.
After 7 hours of painting, the POR 15 coat was complete. I used foam brushes that I bought at Lowes to paint the frame. The bristle brushes that I brought through Restomotive left bristles everywhere so I used the foam brushes exclusively. The painting took a lot longer than I expected. I had taken two days of leave to work on the frame and also study for the corporate finance class that I am taking. I'm glad that I took that time off!
Place holder for pictures of top coated frame. Coming soon!
