POWDERCOATING AND PAINT (1)

Friday 26th May. It didn’t take long to strip it, but after seeing what Adam and his lads at Aerocoat could do, I’ve ended up having twice as much stuff done. Adam made the mistake of telling me you can powdercoat over filler, something everyone reckons can’t be done. But the filler has to contain metallic powder. He told me the make. Isopon Metalic. Not easy to find, but I tracked down a can and set to smoothing out all the welds. 20 hours of rubbing down later, last Friday, I received a call from Adam. He knew I was in a panic to get the bike finished, but had just remembered he was going away for a week. He didn’t want to let me down, so if I could get my stuff straight over, he said he’d coat enough for me to start assembly before he left on Sunday. I had to stop filling, and rushed it over. Sat in his workshop for two hours masking everything (you have to use heatproof aluminium tape), and left him to it. He said he’d do the Chromex silver on Saturday morning. He was a bit taken aback by the thickness of filler I’d used, as he’d only ever used it to fill scratches, and wasn’t sure if the powder would take.

4.30 Saturday, I got an extremely excited call from him. “It’s come out brilliant” he shouted. I got straight in the car and shot over, just to have a look. It really had come out superb, but what he hadn’t told me was that he’d also powdercoated all my other parts, and that they’d come out of the oven minutes before I arrived. I had to wait an hour while they cooled down, and even when I got them back to the shed, some of the larger parts were too hot to hold. That was an EXACT 24 hour turnaround. Bloody amazing!

One thing I didn’t mention. As my budget was well over the limit, I loaded the complete bike in my truck and took it over to Aerocoat, in the hope that, upon seeing it “in the flesh”, he’d do me a good deal. He went one better than that, he’s done the lot free of charge. He also offered to blast the parts I was going to paint, including the frame, to give them a good key. When I turned up with my truckload of bits, I explained that my deadline (June 2nd) was approaching rapidly, and could I have them back in a couple of days? Mark, the chap that does the blasting, overheard, dropped what he was doing, and blasted them while I waited. What a hero. Big thanks, Mark, mate.

So, what can I say about Aerocoat? You’ve just read how they bent over backwards to help. Their finish is amazing. They only do car and bike parts. Industrial stuff is merely a sideline. Try them.