Hitchcocks Forum

Morning all , despite recently being stripped back to bear metal and painted with so called " hard wearing metal paint " Bertie's trailing arm has shed a lot of this paint and started to rust again, the problem is that the section of the arm that sits in front of the rear wheel get all if the mud and muck kicked up off the rear wheel, I need something a lot tougher that will with stand the beating it gets, any ideas at all, all I can think of is Hammerite ?

What kind of primer did you use? There are various 'tough' paints available, but all will fail without a decent primer. Hammerite is tough, but if painted on sound metal (ie. not rusty) it will chip very easily, just like any other paint. I've used Simoniz Tough Black, and also a High Solids black from Frost. Both have been good on top of aerosol etch primer.

You say the paint has been shed? If it is flaking off then it wasn't applied properly. Preparation is more important than the actual painting, and paint will not adhere to shiny paint or a wet or oily surface. As Another Alan says, the primer/undercoat is the most important bit. The top coat's just to look good. Hammerite is pretty good (though not as good as it used to be due to H&S alterations in the mix) but I find it still needs a primer whatever it says on the tin.

-------------or have it Powder Coated then protect it with an rubber mudguard extension to go fully down below the pivot arm...