Gary,

As usual I sit here in the early morning hours and have the laptop and TV going. I looked up the 2 options I was talking about.

www.ucoatit.com

http://www.myclassiccar.com/MCCTV/2005Season/10006/tip10006.shtml

As you can imagine, any paint down surface will only stick if you remove the oils and all of that POR15. If the water beads up, the new surface won't stick very long. These paint down products are used in machine shops everywhere and they are tough. This U-coat it looks to be able to handle jack stands and florr jacks and chemicals.

www.racedeck.com (web site didn't get me a lot of info)

http://www.myclassiccar.com/MCCTV/2005Season/10009/tip10009.shtml

This is a snap together product made for garages. Made in SLC. Not sure how it will handle implements but I'm sure they can answer that. You can put down a yellow stripe to go with the car!. Thay can even put a Z logo into a square or the entire floor. Very Cool! Probably expensive though. And this product can be moved to your next house and added to, for your 4 car garage (I know, I'm a dreamer)

that roll out stuff, if it doesn't need adhesive, what will stop it from coming undone or scrunching up if you push it with something....just seems like it would work...

that roll out stuff, if it doesn't need adhesive, what will stop it from coming undone or scrunching up if you push it with something....just seems like it would work...

Yea, you have to wonder. If you are in the center, it will probably stay pretty well, bit on an edge....

Gary i saw the mats on My Classic car tv show the other day. they have a set that comes in peices you put it together like a puzzle

The only problem for me with the lay down floor coverings is the expence, it is pretty costly, at least for me. Paint wouldn't hold up for me I don't think, with rolling the car around and sometimes pulling it around lifted on a floor jack... I was thinking about the old fashion use glue to stick them down floor tiles. I've seens some older comercial shops that have that down and it seems to work well, anyone think this wouldn't be a good idea besides the "wet" factor?

Lance, You'd be surprised how tough the floor coatings are. If you've preped the floor properly, you won't tear it loose. Lift trucks drive on these for years on end and they drag their forks all the time. They do hold up! It is all in the prep.

Bryan,

I didn't think about the floors at work, you're right, at least what they use there holds up. I wonder what my chances are of getting a 40 year old floor clean enough?? Lots of oil has hit the floor here in the last 25 years....

If your worried about the corners flipping up, or moving, then you CAN use adhesive where needed. They just say it's not required but you can use adhesive to secure it in place if it's a problem.

This stuff in my opinion just makes more sence for me. my garage floor has some chips and cracks that paint would not hide. Plus this stuff I think would make your garage, or shop safer because it wouldn't be so darn slick. With this product, I might actually be able to drive my Z on ramps with out the damn ramps sliding forward.

beandip, I too thought about that later last night, Worse case IF you do have to put a thin, square piece of wood under your jack stands that wouldn't be so bad. I personally don't have the time to degrease my floor and remove old oil spills and other contaminants like dust ect. to lay down paint and wait 7 days after painting before you can walk or drive on it.

I used www.ucoatit.com on mine. Its epoxy followed by a urethane top coat. It's SUPPOSED to hold up to everything. Cost me $900 for a 3.5 car garage.

The good thing with it is the first coat goes on extremely thin, very watered down, which makes the epoxy really soak into the concrete. I have never had any problems with the base coat at all. Its 3 years old now.

Bad

-M/T ET Streets laying on their side stained it.

-I left a mixture of brake fluid and oil on the floor under the car overnite and it stained it yellowish. brake fluid alone, or oil alone, won't do anything to it.

-I sprayed too much brake cleaner and didn't wipe it up right away, because they say its impervious to chemicals, but brake cleaner bubbled the urethane.

-the 6" strip that is just outside the garage door has bubbled up due to standing water in the rain.

Still, overall, its the best floor covering I've ever had in a garage. I put it on new when we bought the house.

We actually went from closing, over to the house and immediately started to paint the garage gloss white, walls, and ceiling and install 2 ceiling fans. The neighbors thought we were crazy, but the garage is my most important room!

I used the exact same Behr epoxy that was first asked about in this thread. I bought my house from an old lady and the garage had been used but there was only a very small spot probably a foot in diameter where there was oil in the concrete. I followed the directions on the can as closely as possible, and cleaned the crap out of the floor before I put the epoxy down.

I rolled it on with the garage door open, and still ended up getting VERY high off of the fumes. Whew. It was funny cause I had a friend there helping me and when we started we were making nice straight lines back and forth, and after a while our lines were... less than uniform you might say.

It looked great right after we painted it. After a couple of years of using it I can say that the epoxy held on reasonably well under the abuse of rolling a floor jack, but it couldn't take scraping. I dropped the transmission out one day and slid it over so I could access the pressure plate bolts and it carved a big chunk out of the epoxy. Also jackstands could scratch through the epoxy as well. Some ATE Super Blue brake fluid definitely left a blue stain in the epoxy. Oil cleaned up easily though.

So it stained, it was fairly easily scratched, and the foot diameter oil spot that I painted over did eventually start to peel back. It was easy to clean though, and spills wiped right up. The one thing I really liked about it was that the white floor would reflect light under the car so visibility was pretty good under there. I think it would have worked better if the floor was NEW when the epoxy was laid down.

One last thing, I was working in a business at the time where the entire warehouse floor was epoxied. The only time that floor lost any of the epoxy was when a piece of the concrete chipped off. That was TOUGH stuff. I asked the owner of the building about it and he said it was "rated for food service", not sure what that meant, but he also said that it was TOXIC stuff and the guy who put it down used a full rebreather suit and still got very seriously ill from the fumes. That epoxy had been down for maybe 15 years by the time I came around. Epoxy can definitely work and be tough, but the keys are using the right stuff, applying it the right way, and putting it on new concrete IMO.

I just popped in on this thread, but what would be wrong with using some of the Pick Up Bed Liner products?

E

Gary,

check this site out. Great little place :cheeky:

http://www.garagejunkies.net/index.php?