Thread: Roadster pickup getting closer

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Originally Posted by BradC

Any updates Don, or has he decided to start over........LOL
BradC

I know I haven't posted any updates for a while. We found some issues with the powder coating that necessitated blowing the car apart and pretty much going back to bare steel and starting over again. I'll say more after we find out what happens this time around.

Before we blew it apart we rolled it into the sunshine for the first time in it's life. Here are a few pictures of that. Thanks for asking though.

Don

Back to bare steel..??!! The frame? Holy crap; after all you went through with the special filler, etc? Bring us up to date...

Dan's pretty bummed...........no, make that VERY bummed, and since it's his car I should let him air it first. But basically, we started bolting stuff on and noticed the clear coat was brittle. As we tightened down any bolt you would hear this crunching sound. Even holes that we needed to drill out for bolt clearance after the powder coating filled them up would crack out rather than drill cleanly. We thought it might be isolated, but the last straw was when we were bolting on the front shock mounts we saw the clear was separating from the black right around the mount, and we hadn't even tightened it down yet.

After checking further we found the clear on every single part was peeling off of the black like saran wrap. You literally could take an air hose and blow sections off! That was Sunday, and Monday I was at their door when they opened at 7:30. The owner was puzzled and said he has never had that happen, especially on every batch they did...........all 44 pieces. I took a backing plate with me and pulled big sections of clear coat off to show him what was going on.

I PM'd Josh (Streetwerkz) and he gave me his phone number. Very nice, knowledgeable guy, and his opinion was that they either over cooked the black or under cooked the clear, so there was no adhesion. The owner of the shop said he would do whatever to make it right, and I told him we wanted every piece sandblasted back to bare metal and to start over, but this time WE WANT NO CLEAR ! The black was bonded on pretty well, it was the clear that was the problem.

So, what this meant is that we have to disassemble every part of the chassis we had just put together, including pulling the entire rear axle apart. I took the frame back on Wednesday and they spent all day Friday and part of Saturday sandblasting the frame back to bare metal. Our problem is, the body shop that did the fairing in with the Tiger Drylac won't touch that stuff again for any amount of money.........it is a b**** to sand, and they lost money on the first go round. They only did it because we give them all our business.

What that means is that we are going to take the bare frame to the body shop and tell them to do their magic with epoxy primer, regular filler, and black enamel. We won't go through that again because without the filler the frame has some areas that won't come out right. We will let the powder coater blast and redo all the other stuff, BUT NO CLEAR.

Like I said, Dan is really discouraged with this whole ordeal. The thing that should have been the most fun (bolting parts on a finished frame) ended up being the start of us having to go through all that work and money again. We ended up losing the $ 120 we paid for the filler and another $ 350 we paid the body shop to fair it in, all that got blasted back off. Building cars is SO MUCH FUN !!

Sorry for the long explanation, but it was quite the ordeal.

Don

Sorry to hear about this. I feel bad for him, since I know he wants this car to be right. It sure looked fantastic in the pics, though.

It's a real downer to have to redo something you've put so much effort and money into. Even worse when it isn't your fault.

Mike

Ya know Mike, it seems every problem that comes up in building a car happens because of things outside professionals screw up.............be it a body shop keeping a car way too long, or an upholsterer messing up, or, like in this case, the powder coater doing something wrong. You can control the stuff you do yourself, but lose control when it goes to someone else.

We are actually in worse shape than we were 3 weeks ago because now every part is powder coated and that stuff is a bear to get back off. At least before we had bare metal to work with. Don tried to put it into perspective for us by saying that he had those problems with his T when it got together. First the bent valve, and then the motor and transmission coming back out so the transmission could go back for rebuilding after it failed. Oh, and he also had the steering arm snap in half. Don rolls with the punches pretty well and simply parked the T until he felt like working on it again. Dan will rebound too, but I think the 4 years worth of work is wearing thin on him right now.

Speaking of Don, he went to another show today and picked up another trophy. I'm gonna stop hanging around with him, it's bad for my ego.

Don

Do you think this is some sort of adhesion problem??????? This is the backing plate, you can see how the clear peels right off like that shrink wrap some products come with.

Don

Really sorry to see this happen to you guys. I won't be recommending anything in the near future.
Ken

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

Speaking of Don, he went to another show today and picked up another trophy.
Don

Tell him I said congrats!!!!!

Sorry about the ego!!!

Mike

Thanks Mike, I'll pass that along.

Ken, no, you did nothing but good. Powder coating is obviously a great way to go, and we aren't done with it yet. Our guy just messed up on the timing or something. Supposedly, you are supposed to only cook the black coat for something like 6 minutes, then apply the clear and let the whole thing bake for another 16 or so minutes. What we think he did was cook the black too long so it fully cured, then he applied the clear. I spoke to the Tiger Drylac rep and he confirmed what Josh told me. He said they also might have waited too long between the black and the clear..........there is a four hour max window. I saw them rolling the frame in for black on Thursday, and on Friday the clear wasn't done until 4 pm. What is really strange though is every piece exhibits the same problem, and the other parts were done at different times from the frame. Who knows.

I think they won't make the same mistake a second time though, this has got to be expensive for them. Their sandblast guy took all day Friday and most of Saturday to get the powder coating off of the frame. They still have 43 other parts to do, so this should teach them to be more careful in the future. If they are coating railings it is one thing, but if they are doing custom car and motorcycle parts they have to be more careful of timing and all.

Oh, the guy at the shop came up with a great idea at first. He wanted to take compressed air and blow off all the clear. Uh, no, that won't get it, we want what we paid for, not some bandaid repair job.

What a pain.

Don

Don,
We had a situation once a couple of years ago we were getting paint peeling off. I kept looking at it, and it looked like a hand print. I checked another batch and it was all in the same area, this, what looked like hand prints.
We went over to the powder coater and I asked if I could watch them do a batch on the line. After they came out of the dryer oven they were switched on another line and here was this guy transferring the parts from one line to another sweating like a dog. Every time he picked them up in the same spot he was getting his body sweat on the clean steal then it went into the spray booth and the paint wouldn't stick. What a mess, you should try getting parts back from all over the country to fix them. I sympathies with your frustration but at least you will get this all handled.
I guess the moral to the story is if it is right it's right, if powder coating is not your screwed.
Ken

Ouch, that had to be fun to straighten out that one. Any time you are dealing with the human factor screwups can occur, I guess.

Don

Wow tuning in late here after work. Man I'm sorry to hear what you guys are going thru! Dan and you have plugged along with the highest standards for so long, it just feels like a punch in the guts to have this happen right as everything is ready to reassemble! I'm glad you stuck to your guns and made them make it right. It is one of the hardest things to do, but if Dan didn't it would eat him up forever.
I once got a BMW painted. The guys kept putting me off, finally told me it was ready at 6 p.m. on a Friday. In the dim light it looked great, the next day the runs that hid so well at night were everywhere. It took two weeks to get them to buff the major ones out!
Hang in there, I hope they stick by you guys and do a bang up job, second time around! Steve

Sorry to hear about the troubles Don!!! Im sure Dan must be pretty bumned! But you never know, maybe it happened for a reason, and in the end he`ll get a better final product.

A real bummer for sure, but perhaps you should be happy it showed up so soon and not after you had completely put the car together. That would have been even more discouraging.

Yep, I'm kind of a glass half full optimist, and you are right. Better to find it now than before all the other stuff was bolted on. I picked up his frame on my lunch hour today, it is back to bare metal. After we spend some time DA-ing it (again!!) it will go to the body shop for their touch.

Golf is looking better all the time.


Don