Anybody used city powdercoaters in Brum?

[john]

I ask because the advertise powderocating for £25 f+f > http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BICYCLE-REFURBISH ... 286.c0.m14

Which seems ok. The only local place wanted £80.

 

[PurpleFrog]

After researching bike painting like crazy, I'd want to ask some questions before having a steel bike powder coated. If a bike doesn't lose its galvanized layer in bead blasting, then it may already be approaching the end of its life anyway. (Water gets through paint, and then instead of attacking steel attacks the zinc galvanization - but the zinc is gradually used up this way - it sacrifices itself for the steel.) Different coaters may be offering different degrees of rust protection. I couldn't find anything to put these in a bike context, but:

http://www.pfonline.com/articles/clinic ... _pwd5.html

Answer: Rusting on steel can be tested in the laboratory using a salt spray test (ASTM B117). This accelerated test is used to determine corrosion limits (rusting) of a particular substrate (steel) using a specific pretreatment and coating. Normally, the test product is scribed (scratched to the base metal) before it is put into the salt spray test chamber. Periodically the test part is removed from the chamber and the coating adjacent to the scribe is examined for "creep" (corrosion under the coating)...

· Mild corrosion resistance 250 salt spray hours; requires good cleaning and a single powder coating.
· Good corrosion resistance = 250 to 500 salt spray hours; requires 70 mg/sq ft of iron phosphate and a single powder coating.
· Better corrosion resistance = 500 to 750 salt spray hours; requires 70 mg/sq ft of zinc phosphate and a single powder coating.
· Superior corrosion resistance = 750 to 1,000 salt spray hours; requires 70 mg/sq ft of iron or zinc phosphate and a zinc-rich powder primer or e-coat epoxy primer and a powder topcoat (two coats in total).

Windridge provide quite a lot of detail on what they do and use a primer (although they don't say if it is a zinc one):

http://www.windridge.co.uk/content.php/410

Btw - why is it no one seems to stock an intense orange or acid green? Anyway, I'd definitely ask how many coats they use and what of. (I'd want two! The first one zinc primer.) Although it would be impossible to know if they lied to you, I suppose..

 

[carbon_blob]

If you do use them please let us know about the results. I'm interested in using them, especially as they specifically advertise working on bikes - some of the places near me can match that price but would probably dont know one end of a bike from the other.