Murbella – Day 31 – KBS Rust Seal first coat!

Now the trailing arms will be far more difficult to paint by brush given their size and unwieldiness.

I fully expect those to take a total of 5 days to get the 2 coats of Rust Seal on and then the KPS top coats on.

However, the smaller pieces need to get done and stored away for more space.

So I scrubbed up the parts that were soda blasted with acetone to get the last remnants of soda powder off them as well as reduce any change of oils having contaminating them since I got them back.

The brake caliper mounts were cleaned up from the way they came from CIP1.

I went over the KPS instructions several times and ultimately decided that since  these parts are already cleaned or new, there was no point in going through the multi-step process of their cleaning product and then their rust shield etching product/converter since there was no rust remaining on any of this.

The spring plates (not pictured) too a bit longer to clean with acetone since their have welds that really attracted the soda particles.

As I learned with the POR15 work on the front suspension in 2018, there’s a lot of planning you need to do and have everything ready when you start.

The instructions call for a thin coat, followed 2-3 hours later by another thin coat.

However, even thin, like POR15, the KPB Rust Seal is very tacky and can easily get all over everything. Having acetone ready to clean up the slightly drip or spill is necessary.

Ideally, these should have been sprayed. But that’s not something I can easily afford to do and since they are out of the public eye, I would prefer they be solid and reliably covered and sealed than looking beautiful.

That doesn’t mean I am not trying to prevent drips or brush marks, but even with the self-leveling properties it is difficult to achieve a perfect coat with a brush.

I’m only coating the stub axle bases. I’ll tape a clean line along the shaft for the 2nd coat.

I’m probably going to need to run a tap through the bolt holes as some of the product got in there. I tried to avoid it but I wasn’t fast enough.

I went over each part and tried to smooth out any drips out of holes, as well as catch any unsightly drops that would form due to them hanging.

With everything I have to do today, I may see if I can at least start one of the trailing arms as my last thing I do. Given their weight, I do not expect I can hang hang them from cheap bungee cords to have both sides done at one time. I may need to do them horizontally on the work bench.