Wrinkle Painting

There were a couple of items that needed new wrinkle paint.

I had taken out the old wiring and grommets from the tapered wiring tubes.  They needed new wrinkle paint and some refurbishing.  Since these are tapered, I used a variety of socket sizes as anvils inside of the tubes to tap out the dents.  Here you can see where I was removing some dents at the large end.  For the one at the small end, I used the appropriate sized ¼" socket on an extension inserted from that end.  The picture on the right is after the dents were removed and they were glass beaded.

Here are the header heat shields before and after bead blasting.

The next step was to prepare the aluminum surface using a two part etch and conversion process.  This leaves the surface chemically stable for painting.

The real trick to getting a good wrinkle finish is to have the item hot during the painting and curing cycle.  If it is during the summer, painting in direct sunlight on a hot day is sufficient.  But since I'm in Seattle and it's October, that's not an option.  I had borrowed a two burner hot plate but that won't do a great job in keeping the temperature even over the whole surface.  The ideal solution is to use an oven, but that's not a choice in my house.  Then I thought of the gas barbecue.  It's large enough, portable so I can use inside the shop, the heat can be controlled and with the top closed should provide a uniform temperature.  I did some testing and found that the minimum temperature on low was 250°, too high for wrinkle paint.  So I fell back on the two burner hot plate setup that I borrowed from Lowell Brown.  You can see the partial cure in the right picture.

To be able to handle the wiring tubes, I used short lengths of dowels that just fit into the large end.  That let me completely paint the whole tube and then keep rotating it to prevent paint runs.  Here they are painted and curing while hanging from a rack over the hot plate.

I used Eastwood wrinkle paint.  Other people prefer the VHT brand and of course, having a professional powder coat in a wrinkle finish is a choice too.  Here are the final results.