Cab Refinish

This is the cab after media blasting at Blast Tech. In the second picture, you can see the firewall masked off with card board and duct tape.  Because I changed my plans on how I was going to finish the cab, I had to mask the already finished painted areas. For large parts such as cabs, most vendors will pick up and drop off parts for a small service fee.  But because I wanted to use a specific vendor, Blast Tech that was 100 miles away, I had to do the pick up and delivery services myself. So I made a 2x4-frame fixture for transporting the cab to and from the media blaster.  I registered the frame to the inside truck bed (carrier) and also to the underside of the cab (load).  This eliminated any possibility the cab could shift from side to side.  The ropes were used to hold the cab down and restrain forward and aft movement.  It worked very well and even the local Highway Patrol  liked it.

I built a small 10 x 10 x 8-foot paint booth for painting all of my small parts.  This worked very well in containing over spray and minimizing dust and trash spoiling the paint.  On very cold days I would warm the small room with a space heater, roll in the parts to paint, paint and drop a curtain when done.  This kept the room warm while the paint set up.

The red finish is Eastwoods Corroless Rust Stabilizer primer and the gray is Dupont URO primer.

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I don't have any pictures of the 'final' finish so I'll just describe what I did.  First, I broke one of the cardinal rules of not mixing lines of paint systems.  My first plan called for using DuPont Vari etch, URO primer/builder then Centari single stage (Pitch Black) for the paint system.  After applying these paints (up to the primer) I had changed my mind and decided to go with Glasurit single stage black for the under side and Glasurit base coat clear coat for the final exterior finish.  After talking to the paint reps, they unofficially said putting single stage Glasurit over URO primer was okay.  Sooo, I used Glasurit System 22 single stage black with 522-300 matting agent for the topcoat (under the cab). The semi gloss black looked great and matched the semi gloss powder coated frame.