I am in the middle of rebuilding my entire rear end. All new bushings, brakes, mounts, etc. and will eventually be getting to the front end as well.

As part of this I am preparing all of the major components ie strut tubes, springs, etc) for painting (or possibly powder coating) and would like to get a recommendation on the type and brand of paint that people have used in the past and have achieved good results.

Would appreciate any and all comments.

Mike.

Hard to go wrong with powder coating. Do the sandblasting yourself, or find someone who will, and save a bunch of money over what some powder coat shops charge. Some shops have in-house blasting, while others outsource it and make a little profit on it.

Yeah Mike

Powder coating is the way to go. After that any paint will be secondary to the powder coat. If you are interested in getting a sandblaster Harbor Freight has them reasonably priced. I'm in the middle of sandblasting Project 3/72. It's dirty work but you cannot beat the reults.

Like the other folks said, powdercoating is a great way to go. I powdercoated most of my parts (ALL front end parts are powdercoated), but I painted the rear diff, rear strut tubes, rear control arms and rear driveshafts with POR 15 Rust Encapsulant. Came out very nice. This would be another option!

You can definitely tell the difference though (look at front strut tubes vs. rear). The POR15 is not as smooth as the powder-coated surfaces, but is very durable and easily touched up.

A few pics are attached.

Tim

Edited January 31, 201114 yr by SSuspect

I've used Eastwood's (www.eastwood.com) Rust Encapsulator and Chassis Black to paint the suspension parts on several projects. Very durable stuff and easy to apply. I think they sell by the quart & gallon and also have aerosol cans if you don't have spray paint equipment. I have a cheap Harbor Freight HVLP gun that I use for spraying the suspension parts. I sandblasted all the parts before I sprayed them. I have a Trinco 36 blast cabinet in my shop, TP Tools (www.tptools.com) has some good blast cabinets available, too.