frame wrap and paint questions

[oldsmobile joe]

my son is half way through his welding classes at college and is looking for projects to do. i offered a g-body frame i have sitting around and have purchased the frame wrap from hellwig.
my questions have mostly to do with frame preping the open C channel portion. should i get it sand blasted and painted? should i just get the por15 frame kit? do i even need to worry about it?

 

[Streetbu]

Are you going to drive it during the winter or will it be your weekend cruiser on nice days? Mine is the later, so I just used Rustoleum and painted it.

 

[pontiac guy]

Rust-Oleum. I use it on everything underneath. Blast it clean and prime it with clean metal Rust-Oleum primer.

 

[oldsmobile joe]

the frame will go under one of my summer cars. no winter, no snow. but not a show car either.
back in november he told me the school was talking of shutting down after christmas due to covid fears. WTH! are you paying second semester tuition? who's reimbursing your 6mo of house rent? do you still get a diploma? or just a certificate?
so i tossed out the idea of frame wrapping to him for the welding experience. week later he came back with the good news that the school was staying open. thank god! and his instructor liked the idea of the frame wrap.

because he'll be welding on it, should i use weldable primer? do i prime the wrap plates as well as the areas that are to be welded?

 

[oldsmobile joe]

Rust-Oleum. I use it on everything underneath. Blast it clean and prime it with clean metal Rust-Oleum primer.

reminds me of a Franks Red Hot Sauce commercial. lol

 

[Clone TIE Pilot]

The factory coating on GM frames is a hot wax coating, not paint. Any wax inside the rails can catch fire from welding. Happened to me when I welded a body mount repair washer onto the frame.

Weld through primer is just for painting the backside of panels that can't be painted proper after being welded together. For frames you can still use flexable snake extensions with 360 spray nozzles to recoat the insides of the frame rails. Personally I would recoat the frame with either good 2 part (2K) coatings like epoxy primer and urethaane top coat or replacement frame wax coatings like 121B.

 

[fleming442]

I just ran across a new one recently: aerosol Flex Seal. A local old timer that builds hot rods started doing it, and got my buddy's dad to do the frame of his '52 F-1. I have to admit; it's quite impressive looking, very similar to bedliner and dries hard unlike undercoating.

 

[Maverick's_Monte]

Fluid film! love that stuff. its not permanent and you will have to recoat depending on how much weather the car sees.

 

[Clone TIE Pilot]

I just ran across a new one recently: aerosol Flex Seal. A local old timer that builds hot rods started doing it, and got my buddy's dad to do the frame of his '52 F-1. I have to admit; it's quite impressive looking, very similar to bedliner and dries hard unlike undercoating.

Problem with hard coatings is that they are more phrone to chipping when something impacts them like stones. Hard = brittle. That is one reason GM use hot wax coating, it absorbs impacts and less phrone to chip. Generally aerosol coatings are junk compared to 2 part coatings sprayed from a gun.

 

[Clone TIE Pilot]

Fluid film! love that stuff. its not permanent and you will have to recoat depending on how much weather the car sees.

I use similar stuff on my Crown Vic, Ford paints their frames rather than wax dip them like GM. Fluid Film type coatings are pretty much ard protective coatings to apply over the main coating. Its not the same stuff as the GM wax frame coating which has stronger cohesion and adhesion with greater hardness. Basically the 121B coatings are a hard wax coating while stuff like Fluid Film are a soft wax coating.