1330 Aspirations

[Grant]

Another quick 4 months has flown by and I’ve made some progress.

Subframes before …

   

Subframes after sandblasting and red oxide primer

   

Painting in my makeshift spray booth

   
   

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Many coats and many days later …

   
   

After a fair amount of umming, ahhing and researching I opted for smooth black Hammerite out of aerosol cans. So far I am pretty happy with the finish but application wasn’t the greatest having to leave a day in between coats for the paint to dry completely. In all I did 4 coats using 9 x 400ml cans.

Since painting the subframes I have started using Rustoleum for some smaller parts like brackets, control arms, etc. It dries very quickly and the finish looks good but I’m not sure how hardiness compares to the Hammerite.

The only thing I would have done differently with the subframes is I would not have had them painted in red oxide after the sandblasting. The advantage is you buy yourself some time to get painting before the bare metal starts rusting but the disadvantage is that if you scratch through the black paint layer the red oxide stands out like a sore thumb. In hindsight I would have planned my collection of the subframes from the sandblaster so that I could paint straight away and would have used some kind of a black primer.