powder coat or rechrome I have been looking around to see if anyone of you guys had powder coated your bumpers on the mav. maybe some pros and cons to this?
I personally think powder coating is crap but there are plenty who will dissagree. I have a powder coated trailer and a bunch of powdercoated rims. Every one of them is peeling off and dull as hell.
i use powder coat at work.....as long as the part being coated is prepped correctly it should not flake at all.... we grit blast most of our stuff and sand and grind or whatever the case may be....of course....any bit of foreign material....or contamination and the powder will flake off as would any paint... take door knobs and stuff like that....the gold and chrome.....thats mostly powder coated....itf the part is clean...it works awesome... steps... 1. lightly abrade surface...sand paper...scotch bright pad...etc.... 2. clean...with solvents. (MEK is great for this...it flashes fast and leaves no residue) dont use aliphatic naptha...it leaves a residue.. isoprpyl alcohol is ok..but it takes a whiloe to flash off) 3. perform a water break free test on the part.... (after cleaning...water should not seperate..it should flow continuosly over the part... one fluid motion... if you see a seperation in water...it isnt clean....reclean...and then re test... 4. bake water off (leave in sun or put in an oven at 150* for one hour. 5.take part off and while still warm...powder coat it...then bake it how ever long the powder says to at the temp they suggest. of course if you ware paying someone to do this..they will know this already.. but there ya go.. powder coating made simple.. good luck
mono chrome reminds me of the 80's not that there was anything wrong with that... but to me chome bumpers is timeless with a car that came with them in the first place. as far as power coating... if its done right it will out last chome anyday! chome dulls, chips, rusts and then needs to be rechromed again! i still like chome though. but for long life power coating!
I agree with Mavaholic. The items I had powder coated under the hood are dull as heck...I'm thinking of getting the items chromed. I got both my bumpers straightened & rechromed from Restorationchrome in Spokane, Wa. (last year). The price was $240.00 each bumper. Go to www.restorationchrome.com for there price list of bumpers for all cars...
get a better power coater! a good example of good power coating are bicycles... i mean remember that bike you had? ok maybe you didn't have one? but if you did have one maybe you had or knew someone who had a chome bike and/ or knew someone that was what you thought was painted (actually powercoated). think about it, which one rusted first? yeah thats what i'm talking about. if your looking for some "good" powercoaters go here. http://www.embee.com/ they are contracted out by Allied Signal, Boeing / Rockwell, Lockheed, etc. well are you looking for shiny stuff or something that will last longer? by all means if your looking for shiny stuff to catch peoples eyes... yes... chome it! however there is such a thing as high gloss power coating, but your right it will never shine like chome!
One more thing on chroming I had my bumpers done at Tri-City why I went there was 2 reasons the price and the warrenty I asked the guy how good is the warrenty he responsed by saying they had chromed a couple 55 chevy bumpers 15 years ago and there was some rust forming on them so the guy sent them back and they are redoing them. I said that sounds like neglect not the quality of the chrome he said NO that is customer service. Now I had some parts powder coated and they dulled and just didn't look as good as quality only after a year I asked the company (which is a national company) if there was any warrenty on these parts, there response was it probably is the enviroment of where the parts are?! What kind of answer was that !!! This car hasn't seen any inclement weather for 20 + years GO CHROME
