Under Coating the Cab
Well I finally laid down some paint this weekend. Took forever to clean and prep the cab. I needed to clearance the trans tunnel a little so I cut out the flange and welded a bead to seal it up. The trans needed to be lifted a little due to angle.
I pretty much just scuffed the bottom of cab, washed with dawn soap and water, dried it with air hose, then cleaned again with wax and grease remover, and sprayed Eastwood rust encapsulator (2 coats) for my epoxy base. This stuff is fortified with epoxy for better adhesion so I thought it was an easy way to apply something to keep the bottom sealed and any future rust at bay if a rock or something were to penetrate my undercoatings.
This sat for 24 hours with the heater on in the garage to keep the temps up above 70 degrees. I decided to go further up on the firewall than originally anticipated so I had to grind down and weld up some firewall holes and clean up and shoot more epoxy again but no big deal. I waited about 2 hours to let dry well.
I used some seam sealer on my welds underneath first, let dry for hour, then I laid down some lizard skin(CI). I used the Eastwood undercoating gun and it worked really good. This stuff is super easy to spray and it sprays really well with this gun, not much over-spray at all. I put 3 coats on, 1st coat was light and I let it tack up nice before next 2 thicker coats went on.
The next step happens tonight. I will spray on about 2-3 coats of rubber undercoating on top of the lizard skin. After talking to Eastwood about the lizard skin products, they say you can use it for undercoatings but it was designed for internal not external usage so its not really heavy duty. They recommend top coating it with a flexible durable coating.
