In or around Phil’s / S Jersey Anybody know a good place to get frame & undercarriage of a friends 1940 Ford pickup cleaned & coated. Drove it around this winter getting surface rust & usual crud & grime underneath.
Coated? You mean wash off the dirt, then paint it somehow? If it’s rusty, I think you won’t be doing the pickup any favors by coating over rust. It will still be there, and will continue to eat metal. Only way to stop it is to remove the rust. Best way to do that is total disassembly then blasting.
Yeah, @alchemy has a point there. I guess you can wash and brush POR-15 on the frame, it likes rust. If it is a driver quality PU, its okay. PITA though for someone to deal with someday if they want to remove it paint it proper. Chem tank will take it off. Been there, done that.
Anyone who has taken apart an older car or truck knows that there are nooks and crannys in corners, between parts and even under fasteners that any amount of surface cleaning won't get. Understand that and decide if it's going to be a once over with a spray wand at the local coin wash followed by some spray can protectant, or a full disassembly followed by paint and plate. It will probably be somewhere in between. Time, money and local access will determine the choice.
^^^What he said. You take them an empty frame, no rubber, no bolts, etc. What you get back generally weighs a lot loess than when you dropped it off. I usually de-frame every thing I play with but my 442 is a different story. I built it 27 years ago and I didn't have the garage or tools (lift) to go that deep at the time. The frame is fair, but it is coming up on 60 years old and it shows. I few years ago I bought one of those Eastwood "inside the frame" rust capsulizing spray bomb things and ran it up the inside of the rails. I painted the outside of the frame with POR-15 but I sprayed it, I would not recommend that (what a mess and it is wicked dangerous to your lungs). It still looks pretty decent for a street car (not a show car). If you use the POR-15 product, get their frame paint (if they still sell it, it looks like GM chassis black) and their reducer (proprietary), it will go on much smoother and self level (take away most of the brush strokes. One caution on POR products, they need humidity to cure. I had one that required wetting the shop floor under the car, that did the trick.
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