Angelo's Build Thread and Powdercoating

[stelios]

Since Kevan complains so much about how little people use this forum, I figure I might as well start contributing a little bit. I'll post updates from time to time, although generally when I work on my car I'm always too dirty to take pictures. However, I'll do my best to chronicle my adventures. I recently picked up a cheap electric powder coating gun, and used it for the first time today. The gun itself worked really well, the powder went on super easy, so I'm hopeful that when I get a big enough oven I'll be able to do entire rims and such.


It's cooling off at the moment so I'll post pics when I put it all back together.

[stelios]

For a first try, it came out AWESOME. I now want to powder coat everything around me. This is going to be a problem.

[ginger]

Damn man looks very nice and glassy! I may have a few parts if you work for beer

[Grasshopper]

^Second that notion. Who wants to go in on an oven

[stelios]

Hopefully I'll have one soon enough. I'm getting my brother to run 220 out to my garage soon, then it's just a matter of finding space to put it. It currently contains 3-4 engines in various states of disassembly, 2 motorcycles, a giant freezer, a plethora of plumbing/electrical/construction supplies, and lacks any form of organization

[stelios]

Ordered.

Ordered.

Hopefully my car will actually be quiet enough to race now...I believe I was compared to the Corvette in front of me in noise level last time 0:)

[ginger]

Those dynomax mufflers are pretty damn good at bringing down the noise for sure. I noticed when I tried to make mine fit that the car was much more comfortable on my drive to work

[stelios]

Hopefully that and the second resonator will make it quiet enough. I drove up to Sun Peaks this weekend and half way into the trip I was really starting to wish I had brought ear plugs. We made it there and back surprisingly though, the old girl did well.

[stelios]

Went wrecker shopping last weekend. Of course I didn't actually find what I was looking for, but such is life. Found a new lip though, 10 points if anyone can guess what it's from

[stelios]

This thing has been sitting in my garage for a while now, I think it's about time to do something fun with it. High compression with ITBs is the plan for now, we'll see what actually ends up happening.

I also finally picked up a real oven for powdercoating, have to finish wiring power for it but hopefully that will be up and running next weekend. Also bought an old man car so I can take the CRX off the road for a while to do some work. Need to relube all my bushings and find a clunk that has been getting progressively worse. I wasn't crazy about the prospect of driving it through another salty winter here either, it has enough rust already.

[stelios]

Well powder coating is finally under way. Definitely need a bigger oven but this ugly thing will work for the time being.

I coated the valve cover for my Chevy Sprint Turbo as a first attempt. Wrinkle powders seem to be tough to get right, but this one didn't turn out too bad. There is one spot that didn't wrinkle very much, but I think I may have gone a bit light on the powder in that one area. Regardless when it's installed you can't really see the spot so I'm okay with it.

[ginger]

Looks good man! The wrinkle is tough to get right but looks like yours turned out great. Now get that sprint to the track!

[crazycanadian]

That powder coating looks great..

[stelios]

Thanks! I may start taking requests in the new year if you guys need some parts done, you'll have to sand blast them before you give them to me though, I don't have a blaster unfortunately

[stelios]

The beast runs! We started the turbo sprint for the first time in 5 years last night, and she started up without too much trouble. Hopefully you guys will see this thing out for an event or two in the new year. Here's a video of it's first start up.

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c157/manous/Turbo%20Sprint%20First%20Start_zpsa79szs9b.mp4

[stelios]

Just placed an order for rebuild parts for my VTEC engine. OEM seals, water pump, gaskets, etc. After the Sprint is done I'm going to be starting the rebuild for boost

[stelios]

Got some more powder coating done this weekend. Chrome this time It didn't come out perfect, but I was rushing so I made a few little mistakes, nothing major though. I might sandblast and re-coat it if I feel so inclined. This is without any clear coat as well, although I may clear it if I end up redoing the chrome coat. I also need to look into the possibility of powder coating over body filler, as the metal itself has some pitting in it which you can see in the last picture, under the spark plug hole for cylinder 4.

[solorex]

Nice. You should really grind the grounding post off above cyl#4 because it will come very close to contacting your hood if you plan to use this valve cover in your CRX or any EF.

[stelios]

Didn't know that, thanks for the advice! When finals are done I'm going to hopefully doing a bunch more coating, and finally getting my engine build underway. Garage is damn cold and it's not even December yet =\

[Grae]

Not sure how deep the pitting is you were talking about filling.
I've heard of people just using powder coat as body filler since it will naturally flow when heated. You just coat it thicker where you want to fill.
Some of my coworkers experimented with it a bit since we recently got a powder coater and it seemed to work pretty well for filling surface marks.

Reference: Dan Gelbart video on coatings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7onZGqrYyY
He talks about powder coating at about 16 min in and talks about fixing surface defects at about 19 min I think.