Any advice on painting cages

[cfritznewton]

I'm planning to paint the cage on my bomber but am a little worried about paint pooling at the intersections. Any advice beyond multiple light coats?

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[Browneye]

What kind of paint?
IMO you can get a much thinner finish with an airbrush and something that sticks to plastic. In this case an adhesion promoter is recommended.

[cfritznewton]

I was thinking faskolor through an airbrush. I'm new to this kind of painting would an adhesion promoter just be a flat base coat or a specific product?

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[Browneye]

There's one called Bulldog, and someone here was touting Adhereto that Coast Airbrush sells. SEM also has one.
In any case, it's a clear paint additive you can either spray as an undercoat, or mix in for flexibility. It's used to prep plastic car bumpers in the auto refinishing industry.
Probly suggested for a plastic cage.
Or just shoot it with Krylon Fusion - it's more like a dye.

But I haven't done either so all bets are off.

Anxious to see what and how you do.

[Shinchu]

yep i was going to say fusion. it melts a bit of the top layer of plastic so it literally bonds itself.
but some have said most krylon paints do that now, fusion or not.

tricky part is keeping the cage nice when you bang into some rocks.

[Browneye]

OP - you see this one??? •~ RR10 BOMBER Picture Archive ~• no talking

Cage looks like welded steel.

[Shinchu]

reminds me... i saw somewhere it was like powdercoat in a can! ahhgr its gonna drive me nuts if i don't find that stuff now... oh yeah it was on a SEMA build last year i think. not safe for plastics iirc. dernit.

[Browneye]

I don't know what the bake temp is for PC, but it's pretty high - enough that I don't think it's compatible with plastic. And I'm not a big fan of powdercoat anyway, it's is SO brittle and hard that it chips, and cannot be removed, nor patched. Once it's on a piece that's pretty much it unless you can sand blast it.

When I used to restore motorcycles we would media-blast frames and then paint them with auto enamel. They were just as nice and almost as durable as PC, but re-paintable, touch-up-able, and patch-able. Not so with PD. For hubs and hard parts and such, it's great.

I'm relatively sure acrylic auto enamel with an adhesion promoter would work pretty well. Even so, any scratches are going to reveal the black plastic underneath. For that reason I'm reticent to paint a plastic cage. That orange one does look pretty rad though, I have to admit.

[mewalsh100]

Powder Coat relies on pos/neg charge, so it is not compatible with plastic.

[cfritznewton]

I know it's going to chip. But I just can't resist a painted cage. My have to get one cage for show and one for real use.

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