What primer to use

[Jacques Reed]

Perhaps sandblasting takes off all the paint before any levels can be exposed.

I have only used sandblasting on the chassis due to its size and preferred using a caustic soda and water bath to remove paint on all the other steel parts of my vehicle. This was then followed up with molasses and water immersion for rust removal. It is a slow process but thorough, and more gentle on sheet metal parts.

I can assure you as the levels of khaki/green/sand whatever paint came off after the caustic bath, the last remaining paint to be water blasted off the bare steel was either red or grey primer.

Cheers,

[Jacques Reed]

I have been using the generic term "red primer" in this thread. The actual colour of the primer I have seen is more a reddish brown.

Red lead primer was banned even in my early days at sea in the 70's but seafarers still called any primer "red lead" for many years thereafter. It was a more red colour compared to the reddish brown primer I have seen on my vehicle.

Doesn't prove vehicle paint didn't contain lead but obviously they were differently formulated paints.

[Jacques Reed]

Should have added this to an earlier posting.

Here is my roof after coming out of the caustic bath and first pressure wash.

Remains of "red primer" can be seen at bare metal level.

It took another dunking to remove all the primer.

Sandblasting would leave fine scratches in the sheet metal which many people like as they feel it give a good key for the primer. Again, personal preferences, but I prefer not to have the fine scratches and use Wattyl Super etch on the bare metal after the molasses bath and a wipe of metal prep followed by either Wattyl or Wagon Paints primer.

Cheers,

[Stew Robertson]

out of all the vehicles I have cleaned rebuilt and sand blasted I have never seen red primer here in Canada and I have done a few including sanding off paint with water sand paper finding markings even the carriers I am doing now there is absolutely no primer on any of them, also the tank that we are working on now : absolutely No primer!

[Private_collector]

I wet-sand through paint when looking for different layers. That's done prior to sending for blasting.

[Jacques Reed]

As my Ford CMP was Australian assembled I can only surmise that Ford Canada and Ford Australia had different painting specs if no primer is found on a Ford Canada CMP truck.

After twenty years of stripping paint and seeing red/brown and grey paint come off the bare steel when waterblasting parts from the caustic tank I still believe primer was used on these Australian made vehicles from the factory.

[Alex van de Wetering]

Jason,

I am using Rustoleum 769 rusty metal primer (comes in grey and red/brown) on my Chev and I am happy with the results so far. It's 1K, can be sprayed or brushed and fills grooves nicely. There is also a related primer in spraycan 2269....this has slightly different ingredients, but I use it for touch-ups and to spray bolts after tightening them.
769 is a rust primer, so bonds to light rust, which means its ideal for my way of restoring....I clean a lot of parts with a wire brush on the angle grinder...even though I continue until the part is completely shiny, it will still leave small rust parts, even though they can't be seen. The 769 bonds to this.

I used a PU primer previously, but wasn't impressed as rust was already showing a year after I cleaned, primered and painted parts (OK, they were left outside). I am guessing the PU WILL work when you sand blast all your parts.

A lot of guys in the UK use Bond-a-primer, which seems to give great results as well.

I remember when I was looking for a new primer, that everyone uses a different brand making it hard to choose which one to buy!

Alex



by the way....red oxide containing lead is still available here at specialist suppliers. It has been banned for years, just like in the rest of the world, but it seems it has become available again as for some applications there just is no alternative, or the alternative is just as toxic (?).