rust and paint, recommendations?

I am thinking of painting the frame of my bike as it has a surprising amount of small rust speckles.

However last year I did a trailer and it was a disaster! I had stripped it back (sanded and wirebrushed) to bare metal where rusty, cleaned and sanded everywhere else, then I bought paint, a three paint system of rust proofer, undercoat and topcoat. Well despite being the same brand and very clean bits of it bubbled so I sanded them back again and re-primed and topcoated.

I also tried chassis/underbody matt black over a proprietary rust proofer on a separate area, the towbar. This was OK for a few months but rust is showing through again on all areas!

So what is the best rust-proofing and top-coating system you guys use? I don't have a sprayer and can't afford sandblasting or hot gal or such fancy stuff. I guess therefore I prefer a brush on method. I would prefer a matt black.

Get two cans of spray-on truck bed liner. Matte black. Waterproof. Bonds to even a lightly sanded metal. Dries in minutes. Easy to respray/patch if you go down. May even absorb vibrations.

Depending on how much area you need to cover, you could easily do three coats in one hour and never have to worry about it again!

I know it may sound stupid but I really think it's a great idea. Saw a guy coat his funktup crash bars (on a DL650) with it once and I was sold.

CC

I know a guy in a KLR forum in Los Angeles who swears by black bedliner for painting plastics too, though he says prep is crucial. recent threads have suggested that bedliner is being made in other colors because of its strength and durability.

jkp

Thanks guys, will go to the shops on the weekend and try and find some at a reasonable price.

+ 3 to bedliner, You can get it @ wal-mart for cheap in aerosol cans or a bucket of brush on + roller

there's a brand called speedliner 1000 that comes in 20 colors, so you are not limited to black. bedliner is a vinyl coating that leaves a highly textured surface and is practically bulletproof. the look is not for everyone, but I know I will use it for my battered old KLR650 in California once I've found replacements for some of the plastics.

http://www.speedliner.com/colors

jkp

Corrosion prevention/maintenance: ACF-50. Frame paint: Hammerite (smooth, matt, hammer finshes, but not much choice on colours!)

All are good ideas. Let us know how it turns out!

CC

not sure if this link is still available, and being facebook it's a pain in the arsch for me to test from here, but this should take you to images of a "bedliner black" KLR650 in Los Angeles owned by Jeff Khoury, who posts in yahoo group DSN_KLR650.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pi...&id=1121850447

obviously we are talking about the whole bike, not just the frame.

opinions?

I have recently repainted all the ferrous bits on my bike, and used a mixture of Hammerite and wrought iron gate paint, the latter was cheaper, and seems to be a tougher finish.

As to rusting, I recently abraded back the paint to bare metal and found much of the metal is pitted and in the pits rust, so despite my efforts, it is going to rust again, but at least I have slowed it down and it looks better.

If all of the bike is made from silmilarly pitted metal, then I would have thought the only way rust could be prevented, was if the bike was stripped bare, and treated with a rust converter before being sealed and painted, a mammoth job, is it really worth it.