1953 Rover P4 75

April 2018 - Frame paint

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For painting the frame, I spent a lot of time sifting through forum discussions and researching options. It remarkably easy to find people who love and hate the same paint products! There are a variety of options out there from enamels to urethanes. How do you decide? Ultimately in the end, I was looking for a paint product that other restorers generally had a favorable opinion of and could be brushed on because at the time I was not ready to dive into spray painting. Many people like POR-15 but I have not tried it myself to have any opinion. POR-15 supposedly adheres to rusty metal best and did not seem like a good fit for this P4 frame because I was dealing with a clean and rust free bare metal frame.

I decided to use the Master Series Coatings line of paint for the frame. Their signature silver moisture-cured primer is applied to scuffed bare metal first and then followed by AG111 gloss black chassis paint. All of this stuff gives off nasty vapors and should be applied outdoors with plenty of strong blower fans for ventilation!

P4 frame after Master Series silver primer application. The primer dried within a hour of application and I would go through several brushes after the previous one clumps up due to the primer drying so rapidly.

P4 frame after Master Series AG111 gloss black application. The black coating dries fairly quickly and within a few hours is not tacky to the touch, but it gets very hard and stops giving off vapors after about a week. Now the frame is all done and ready to build the P4 back up!

You can still see the serial number on the frame after the chassis paint was applied.



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