With Eastwood Chassis Black ( I prefer the Extreme version) and Eastwood you can make your drivetrain parts look like new. I use this combo anytime I have an engine or transmission out of a car. You can’t beat the “factory fresh” look with this combo.
I’m building a few projects at once, and it seems just about every one of them needed some sort of powder coating done before I could start reassembly. I took this past weekend to tackle my growing pile of parts for powder treatment.
There were 2 steps to this process. The first was cleaning the parts with the media blaster. Since I had some large parts that wouldn’t fit in the blasting cabinet, I decided to use a mix of soda blast media and aluminum oxide in the dual blaster to quickly remove the years of paint, rust, and grime on these parts.
An important tip is to sift your media through a strainer before it goes into the blaster. This is your last chance to make sure that there aren’t any pieces of oversized media that weren’t broken down enough. The smallest rogue piece could clog the blaster and cause headaches! This is extremely important if the media isn’t high quality or has been stored in a questionable area where condensation could have gotten to the media. Either way it’s a good habit to form. Sometimes you’d be surprised at what you catch!
Once I blasted all of the parts I treated them with Eastwood After Blast to give them one final cleaning process and optimum powder adherence.
The fun part of this process was finally here, and I started by grabbing my Dual Voltage HotCoat Gun and doing a layer of high gloss black powder followed by hot flocking a layer of ultra gloss clear powder over the parts. This combo is one of my favorites. It really gives an ultra-deep, shiny look to the black that is hard to beat!
Once that batch had cured I moved on to do some engine brackets and other items in black wrinkle. This powder leaves a nice O.E. looking finish that is subtle, yet still clean.
After all of this, I can say I am excited to bolt these freshly coated parts onto each car, I just need to find the time! We want to see what you are powder coating, feel free to share your photos on the Eastwood Powder Coating Forum!
As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I am a beginner in the world of TIG welding. I really began tackling TIG welding about a year ago after we offered a crash-course internally here at Eastwood. With the launch of our Eastwood TIG 200 it made it easier than ever for me to finally start learning.
I soon caught the TIG welding bug, and I found myself spending lunch breaks and free time trying to pick up the basics of TIG welding. I started with steel since it was less intimidating than learning to TIG weld aluminum. Above is a picture of my progress, and although my pace and steady hand hasn’t fully developed yet, I was starting to get the hang of it. Ultimately I wanted to be able to weld thin gauge aluminum tubing for a custom intake project I had in the works. As soon as I started to feel comfortable welding steel I jumped right into learning to TIG weld aluminum (albeit too quickly). It was frustrating at first, but as they say “practice makes perfect”… or at least practice makes “better” in this case. Below you can see me practicing on some plate aluminum by welding bead after bead.
Fast forward to January, and I am ready to begin my custom intake project. I ordered up some 6061 .065 tubing and a pair of cast tight radius 90′s. The first job in this process is to cut and weld the 90′s together to create as tight of a 180 degree radius as possible. This was a bit daunting since 3″ cast 90′s aren’t very cheap if I messed it up!
After I cut the pieces down and beveled the edges, I cleaned the weld area with a stainless brush, and Pre. I dropped the helmet down, took a deep breath, and began welding. Above you can see the results. I am satisfied with how it came out, I just need to keep practicing to get that consistent “stack of dimes” look. As I was welding, I did notice that the bevel I made was a bit wide at some points and made it difficult to keep the puddle consistent. I was also getting a lot of contaminants coming to the surface as I was welding, and I couldn’t figure out why. After some thought today, it hit me that I prepped the immediate area around the joint, but I probably didn’t clean a large enough area. That probably caused all of the contaminants I saw popping up in the leading edge of the puddle. Since I have to weld aother piece to this elbow, I decided to media blast the entire elbow and follow it up with our After Weld to get the surface etched clean. Now that I’ve taken those extra steps, I really can see how much cleaner the metal is. I’m pretty confident that’s where the contaminants were coming from. Next time I can hit the joint with the stainless brush to remove any minuscule corrosion and enjoy a clean weld puddle!
With anything like this, I’ll always be perfecting my skills. I have a long way to go, but I can assure you, that I am hooked on the art of TIG welding!
Metal working is definitely an art that takes a lot of practice to master. In the grand scheme of things I am definitely wet behind the ears when it comes to metal working. It seems each time I tackle a new project, I learn a little more. A common misconception when someone thinks about metal working is that you need a huge shop full of industrial sized machines to successfully shape and form metal. It’s easy to see why people come to this conclusion; watch just about any Hot Rod, Chopper, or custom car TV show, and you see them using all of these giant industrial sized machines that cost a fortune. Those tools are great,and amazing to use if you have access to them. But you can build a lot in a home shop with an arsenal of a few essential tools. Some of these you can even make yourself!
Bending radiuses in metal is one of the more difficult tasks you may come across when honing your metal working skills. This is something that was often a mystery to me, and a task I thought required an english wheel. Once I started doing some poking around on a few popular metal working forums, I noticed that many of the seasoned veterans were using homemade tools to form curves and even recreate original embossed shapes in panels. They are using everything from logs and tree trunks to metal pipes and pieces of scrap metal to build some pretty beautiful things.
This got me thinking, with a few simple Eastwood tools, and a couple of items you could find laying around your home, you could really build some neat stuff! I decided to show how we recreated the curve in the driver’s door of Project Pile House using a stainless pipe, a vice, and a couple of our Metal Forming Mallets.
The picture below shows the condition of the door when we started. Not only was it rotted out, it also had a bad dent repair done many years ago. Because of this we decided to replace the door skin just above the damage.
Once we cut off the outer door skin I took the picture below to show the slight radius the panel had to it originally. This is what we wanted to recreate.
After putting a flange on the new door skin, we cut a slit in the top of the flange to allow us to form the radius in the panel we need to recreate. We grabbed a piece of stainless pipe we had that is about 3″, and clamped it in the vice. We then took out our Metal Forming Mallet Set and began slowly beating the edge of the panel over the pipe to get a radius started.
After some hammering and test fitting, we finally got the radius very close. We then used the backing strips in our Panel Install Kit to to get the new skin attached.
Once that piece was tack welded into place, we test fit and continue welding like we’ve already shown you in previous tech entries (you’re on the home stretch!).
Once you get over the idea that you always need to use special tools to form metal, you will find yourself looking at things differently when working in the garage. I know I’ve got the word out to some neighbors about getting one of those big old stumps they have laying around. I plan on making it into a metal working “station”! Give us a shout if you have a cool idea for a metal working tool, we’d love to hear your ideas!
Replacing door skins, quarter panels, and other patch panels can take a lot of practice to get perfect. We have found that there are a few little tips to make a seamless repair much easier. My favorite is the use of a “backing strip” to connect the new and old metal. Below is a crash course on how you can use some thin backing strips from our new Patch Panel Install Kit to make a seamless repair that will last the lifetime of the vehicle.
First make your cut just above the damaged area. Be sure to clean the work area to bare metal and smooth out any sharp edges where the cut was made.
Next, take a one inch backing strip out of the kit, and cut it to the length you need. Then use the supplied 3/16″ drill bit to make evenly spaced holes in the original metal (do not drill holes in the backing strip).
Now that the holes are drilled, take your backing strip and slide half of it under the original metal and clamp the two pieces together. We suggest using our Plug Welding Pliers. They have a copper support pad on them that helps reduce heat into the panel and helps avoid blow-through when making spot welds. The “V” in the top of the pliers makes it easy to pinpoint where you need to plug weld with the helmet down.
Next you can plug weld the backing strip to the original metal. You may want to practice a few times on some scrap metal to get a nice flat spot weld. You should only be holding the trigger for a few seconds when making a spot weld. The result of setting up your MIG welder properly will yield results like below. Remember, the flatter the plug welds you make, the less final grinding and filler you need to do!
Now that you have your backing strip in place, you can begin test fitting your replacement metal. Below you can see another reason why these backing strips are necessary in panel replacement; we can’t always cut a perfectly straight line. Without a backing strip here, you’d have a tough time filling the gap without adding a small piece of metal. Trying to fill the void with weld would have caused major warpage in the metal.
Once you have confirmed your replacement panel will fit correctly, you can drill plug weld holes with the 3/16″ drill bit in the replacement metal. Refit the panel and plug weld it to the backing strip. Once the panel is attached, you can now slowly spot weld the seam between the new and old metal. Remember to jump around from end to end when spot welding. This will help keep the seam from warping and causing more work to get the repair area straight.
Once you have the seam welded up, you can grind any “proud” welds down and proceed with sealer or filler. Use Eastwood Quality Flap Discs to properly blend the welds into the seam. No matter how small of an area, using this procedure when butt welding panels together can really make the difference in the final outcome of the repair.
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