Clearcoat straight over bare aluminum

C

chevy_power427

Clearcoating over a polished or brushed aluminum parts, will it last? One of my customers has some parts he wants clearcoated, but I am in doubt, i think we could be facing adhesion problems.
 
you need to apply adhesion promoter with a little catalyst in it on the bare aluminum before you clearcoat it. adhesion will decent but not crazy durable. i have done polished metal parts in the past on motorcycles and they hold up sorta ok but they also take quite a bit of abuse.
 
Check out cerakote mc 160. Haven't personally tried it yet, but it has a good rep over polished metals.

Gun community likes it if that says anything about it's durability.

It's a 1 part mix with tert-butyl -acetate being the solvent.
 
I think I will try the catalysed adhesion promoter. But I will warn beforehand that adhesion might not be 100%. Maybe then he changes his mind.
 
Its pretty simple, you wet the part and watch the water breaks. Those will be your adhesion problem areas. wash them with soap and water to see if you can clear them. Anything you do will usually remove the polish and lose what they are looking for.
 
Finally did that part. Warned him before even touching his part. Being a bicycle part, it's not going to take the abuse a car takes. Finished part looked pretty good, he was happy.
 
When the part was ready for paint, I washed it with Dawn dish soap to remove polishing compounds, then I cleaned it with the waterborne wax and grease remover. I started with a coat of adhesion promoter over the whole part, and let it dry a couple of hours. I masked the lettering and stripes and sprayed the black, let it dry an hour. Then I just unmasked everything and hit it with 3 coats of Universal, it covered the stripes nicely. Looks better in person.
 
We'll just have to see how it holds up with time. I had coworkers back then that sanded some aluminum wheels and two toned them, and left bare aluminum that was clearcoated. The aluminum seemed to oxidize under the clearcoat. They didn't use adhesion promoter and they left the aluminum bare for some time before spraying.
 
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