Posts Tagged ‘Powder Coating’

What are we testing and working on this week at Eastwood?

Mar 28th, 10 / 0 Comments

Here at Eastwood, we are as much enthusiasts as we are a “Big Corporation”. From testing products at length before releasing them, to working on our own projects, we are always busy! Below is a sneak peak at some projects we are working on currently.

Powder coating seems to be the favorite around the office for restoring those old parts for our projects. Below you will see we were testing our dual voltage powder gun while shooting  some parts, including a Ford transmission case and some Honda motorcycle bits. With the right prep and patience, you can achieve professional results with the dual voltage gun!

Now for some tips that may help you achieve better results when powder coating your parts. The first thing that is a good habit to get into is always wear rubber gloves when handling parts you are powder coating. This helps keep  the parts from getting any dirt or oils from your hands on the parts. The dirt and oils found in your skin can cause the parts to “out-gas” and create imperfections in the finish that you wouldn’t notice until AFTER baking. Another, is to bake the parts in your oven after cleaning. This will bake out any chemicals or oil residue found in the pores of the metal from handling and cleaning. Pre-heating time can vary depending on the type of metal you are coating, but we suggest around 20-30 minutes for most items. The last good tip, that often can be overlooked is to always sift your powders before putting them in the gun. Even brand new powder can get a little “clumpy” from the condensation in the container or even from the moisture in the air. The powder below was pretty much right off the shelf and still we found some small little clumps that surely would have cause “spitting” when shooting the powder!

You can find us constantly trying to test and improve upon our products. Below you can see we are testing some new sample wheel paints. We check for color matching, ease to spray, cure time, and durability. Every product we design and market goes through these tests before it gets to the catalog!

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R&D Corner, Tech Corner

Testing 1-2 1-2

Mar 19th, 10 / 5 Comments

Repetition makes for the best final product. This is why our R&D department is always buzzing. From testing new products that are under development, to reviewing current products and seeing how we can make them even better. This at times can be a bit frustrating, but in the end we feel this what makes Eastwood products stand out from the rest of the industry. Here is a little insiders view on what we’ve been up to in R&D the past couple weeks.

One exciting new product we are very close to releasing is a product that is best described as an “inner frame coating”. Often times when restoring an old car or truck, you do extensive work to treat the exterior of you frame/chassis for rust. But, what about the inside of the frame? Many older vehicles actually rust from the “inside out”. This product is specially formulated to coat, neutralize, stop and treat the rust or corrosion found in those places you couldn’t reach with normal methods. This product is slated to be available in an easy-to-use aerosol can with a special “wand extension”. This “wand” has a machined brass tip on the end that has been designed to give a broad “fan-like” spray pattern (check the pictures below for a sample of what the spray pattern looks like). This is the key to fully covering the inside of the frame. You can even see in the pics below how there is a fine “green” mist of the frame coating coming out of the bottom holes of the frame as Mark is applying the product. Throw away everything your tech ed teacher taught you when painting something; with this product you WANT the coating to be dripping out of the frame. Seeing that will tell you that you are getting a nice thick coating inside the frame.

Keeping on the same wavelength of chassis and frame restoration, we have another product in the final testing stages. This product is being dubbed “After Blast” It is pretty easy to figure out when this product is to be used.. but to those that are unclear, it is a cleaning product sprayed on any part you have blasted. You simply spray  it on after blasting your metal clean and wipe down with a clean rag. I was amazed at how much contaminants it pulled out as Mark sprayed and wiped the chassis down numerous times! This is just another product that backs the belief that “prep is the most important step” when coating/spraying or restoring. Check out the pics below of Mark blasting the frame clean with our Eastwood exclusive Master Blaster Dual Blaster then testing the “After Blast” on the freshly blasted frame!

As many would guess, one of our best selling product lines is Powder Coating. Because of that, we are constantly testing and perfecting our powder coating products. The past couple weeks it has been the powders themselves being tested. First was our High Temp Silver powder. We were testing a couple different samples for 1.) how they sprayed out 2.)How they cured and flowed out 3.) How well they handled the high temperatures that we guarantee them to.

Also here are a few photos of some cool items being coated this past week at the Eastwood headquarters with some of our favorite powders! My personal favorite is J.R.’s vintage go-kart shot in our Starlight Blue Powder. Look at how all the “flake” shows up in the direct sunlight!

Hope you all enjoy this recent ”insiders look” at what we have going on here at Eastwood! Let us know if there are any products you would like to see as a DIY or blog entry.

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Eastwood Pro Restorers, R&D Corner, Tech Corner

Eastwood hits the “Big Time”.

Mar 17th, 10 / 1 Comment

Recently we were contacted by an automotive T.V. show by the name of “MotorWeek”. They asked if they could bring a project car in for some of our experts’ opinions on it. They also wanted to do some segments on Eastwood’s history and a bit of information on what we have going on with some of our products right now. We agreed on a date and waited patiently.

Well, yesterday was the big day and a big truck and a larger trailer showed up. Many of us gathered to see what this “project car” looked like. As they dropped the gate on the trailer, the first couple things we all noticed was 1.This thing is big! 2.Its a Cadillac, and 3.It doesn’t run.. (insert a group sigh knowing we have to push this thing around) After a group effort and a little bit of good old fashioned manpower, we had the car in place in our garage and we could climb all over it and assess the damage.

After climbing around the car a bit, we learned the car was inherited by one of the show affiliates and was owned by his family for many years before being parked indoors. The car had a 1988 PA inspection sticker on it, so you can just guess how long it has been out of commission! To our surprise, the car was fairly solid for the age. The majority of the damage was in the corners of the rear quarters and the bottom seams of the doors. With the use of many of our Rust Solution Products they could easily, stop, remove, and treat the major issues with the body.

Sadly, we couldn’t inspect this classic all day, and we had to get to work setting up the shots for the film crew and doing our best to be quiet during filming (a lot harder than you think!). First, the crew shot an interview with our fearless leader Curt Strohacker giving a quick history of the company and also some details on our current product line. This went off essentially without a hitch, Curt is a natural in front of the camera!

Next up was the shots MotorWeek had planned in our R&D department with the Caddy being the star of the shot. (if not anything, by default due to how huge it is!) Just to show how easy it is to spruce up this car, and also give the guys at MotorWeek a kick start, we went ahead and removed, blasted, and powder coated the left valve cover the original Cadillac Blue . They were so impressed with the ease of this process, they decided to film J.R. shooting the powder on! After the powder cleared and the camera lenses were dusted off (sorry Mr. Camera man!) They began shooting a segment in which our R&D and restoration guru Joe, explained some of the best ways to spruce this old Cadillac back up and which of our products would suit each job. After a few outtakes, Joe got the hang of it and they shot all of the angles they needed.

All in all, this was a great learning experience for everyone involved. After their time spent here, the MotorWeek crew was seen loading a few of our popular products into the trailer. Namely, our new Master Blaster Dual Tank Blaster. Here’s hoping those products are just what they need to get the Caddy back to its former cruising glory! Thanks again to the MotorWeek crew for being so patient with us, and we can’t wait to see the finished episodes!

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Curt’s Corner, Eastwood Pro Restorers, Matt's Motor head Talk, R&D Corner, Tech Corner

Brake parts need love too!

Mar 8th, 10 / 2 Comments

As I mentioned in my introductory post, I have a 1976 VW Rabbit project that I am building from the ground up. This car is going to be built with a heavy vintage motorsport “feel”, but still in the end, it will be a show car and most everything is going to be gone over and polished, cleaned, chromed and powder coated. One thing people often neglect to restore when building a car is brake parts and associated bits hidden behind the wheel. Since I will be buying new brake calipers, I decided I would clean and powder coat the carriers ahead of time. I figured I’d post some photos along the way of some steps I did for the tech geeks like myself, and also to prove to friends and family I actually do work on my 76 Rabbit more than once every 2 years! (I can hear your laughs from here Dad!)

First step when dealing with old parts that are so close to the road like this, is to clean all of that thick grease, dirt and road grime off of the part. This part had obviously been victim to a couple of ripped CV boots and thus had a few layers of hardened grease on them. You wanna scrape the part with a screwdriver or something similar to get the bigger “chunks” off first. Next I hit the carriers with some of our exclusive Eastwood Chassis Clean . Our chassis clean is a very aggressive cleaner that even removes heavy baked-on brake dust and grease. I just sprayed the part liberally with the handy aerosol can. As you can see in the pictures it just washes the grime off and leaves a “clean” (do not mistake for blasted “clean”) surface!

After getting these parts degreased pretty well. I next dropped them in our blasting cabinet. I decided to use some of our Aluminum Oxide Blast Media to clean the carriers. Since I cleaned the parts with our chassis clean before blasting, the carriers blasted clean quite easily.  After both brackets were blasted, I washed and cleaned them with our PRE Painting Prep to get any and all left over dirt or grease off of the part.

Since these parts were cast, I decided to pre-heat these items at 400 degrees to bake out any additional grease or chemicals that still may be lurking in the metal and could eventually cause “outgassing”. After 20 minutes I took the carriers out and immediately sprayed them Semi-Gloss Black with our increasingly popular Dual Voltage Hot Coat Gun . With the part being pre-heated it makes the powder seem to almost adhere a bit better. You may even begin to see a bit of “flow out” of the powder as the powder lays on the parts (the finish will begin to go from the dull “powder” to a “wet” type finish). After I got a nice even coat on both parts, I took them back to the oven and cured them at 400 degrees again until the powder flowed out nicely. After pulling them out and hanging them to cool, I got to relax and admire the nice glossy black brake parts ready to be mated to some new brake calipers!

I by no means am a professional at powder coating and found the dual voltage gun to be quite easy to use. In fact, I was able to manipulate the amount of powder coming out of the gun depending on the pressure I had on the trigger (vs. some other guns I’ve used where it is either “off” or “full blast”).  Hopefully some of my fellow hobbyists out there will be inclined to take up powder coating their own parts after seeing how fairly simple the process is!

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Matt's Motor head Talk
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