Just finishing up my my repaint on my drive. I stipped the drive down to bare metal and painted it with Rustolem. My question is this should I put a coat of clear coat in the drive or not? Looks pretty good now. I was concernd that using the clear might make it more difficult to touch up. Thoughts anyone?

BH

My experience with rustolium is it is crap! It dries soft and peels scratches very easily. I painted mine with the Merc. paint last yr. and it held up great. I just re-did them again.

Merc black phamtom paint is made for this .

I have seen other paint them with enamal like dupont and had good luck..
.

good luck with the Rustolium (Krylon) paint

I wish people would ask the board members before they do those kind of things.

ASK

strip and pure are right. rustolium isnt going to cut it. also you will need an etching primer undernieth the paint, somthing like vari-prime from dupont or one of the DP epoxy primers from PPG. without either of these the paint has no way to adhere to the bare metal.

ya real paint from a real gun Clear is ok long as the base coat is not to thin and the clear is not to think the more MIL'S of paint the more prone to chipping.

Rag's

I had a post a while back and several people said they prefered rustolem over merc......Guess I will find out. I forgot to mention that after sanding down to metal I went with a Zinc Chromate primer over the bare metal then went with the Rustolem. Boat is not left in the water so maybe it will hold up longer. Some things seems like you get lots of different thoughts (like what oil to use! or spark plugs). Im hoping that good prep will lead to at least decent results....

BH

It is not the brand of paint it is the type of paint - Surface prep is EVERYTHING -

1. Wash with salt away or Chlorrid to remove salts - 2. Sand or blast clean - you should have a uniform profile of 1.5+ mils 3. Wash again with Chlorride 4. Use Alodine 1200 wash 5. Use Chromate epoxy Mils Spec 53022 Apply @ 2-3 mils - Finish is the problem - If the boat is in the water use epoxy (any color) if the drive is exposed to sun or is only in the water for the weekend use Aliphatic Polyurethane ( Dupont Imron or similar - (Epoxies chaulk when exposed to sunlight) - If you can not find the Alodine of Mil Spec epoxy follow the instruction s and use Dupont Variprime - two applications for a total of 2.0 + mils - then apply Imron if this is not continously submerged - If the parts can be powder coated use the same pre-treatment process -

If you go to Mercury Marine's web page, look under Mercrusier, technical, about the 7th or 8th article addresses Mercury's procedure with paint numbers.

Clear coat does not touch up well

Well I will stay with the base coat then. And HOPEthat it holds together. My plans are to have it sandblasted/painted down the road in a couple of years anyways. If you saw how it looked before you would realize that ANYTHING was an improvement. Money is all going to the engine top end re-fit and hopefully a week at cumberland in June.

BH