powder coating magnesium wheels

It seems like powder coating magnesium wheels with clear would be a pretty good idea. Why am I wrong? The flash/melt/"bad thing's would happen" is far North of 400 for 10 minutes to get the finish baked on. DO NOT RUN OUT AND TRY IT. I am just asking, am I wrong?

 

I had a customer I painted customized Jap bikes for, who tried to do unusual things like that. He had some Mag wheels for a project, custom cast in England for one of them. Couldn't keep them polished, so he tried powder. didn't work. Can't remember exactly why, but might have been that they outg***ed almost all the time, so you couldn't get the powder to stick everywhere.

 

it will work and work perfectly, you just have to prep the item properly and out gas the cast or porus items longer, it needs time to heat up and open the pores and ****. I do the powdered clears everyday, satins, flats and high gloss.

 

What kind of prep, mine are 40+years old and polished, do I take the wax off or does that matter.

 

The autoignition point of Magnesium in 950*F (510 C) - per MSDS
I think the powdercoat baking is around 400*F
Should be ok, but powdercoating may hide cracks

 

if those came in my door and they were clean, I would wipe the hell out of them with acetone, bake em up slowly to 375, bake them for approx. an hour, then I would let them cool down, hit the powder and bake to cure at 350.

if they were old and ratty, then they would need cleaning and smoothing etc etc

 

You ever see cast magnesium change color from a light grey to dark and then to black in a tub of hot water??? hehehe.... Cool!

 

I'm a co-owner of a powder coating operation and we use "outg***ing" primer powder coat on all of our aluminum wheels we do, also some of the ****py cast iron stuff that comes through the door. This stuff is great! Fills in imperfections and seals any pin holes that might be in the metal being coated. We use to apply 2 sometimes 3 coats of powder just to cover some of the bad spots on rims. We also use zinc primer on certain things. The red oxide outg***ing primer leaves a nice base coat for the finish coat.

 

Thanks for all the info, Sounds like guys are getting this done. Maybe people are worried about the value of old gear, but I would think the coat could be removed as well down the road? Thanks again for all the answers.