Anything Wrong With My Frame Painting Method?

@Tug Toy has an excellent thread on stretching and painting his frame. Looks great. Whatever he did. That’s my answer.

 

guess it depends what you are doing or what kind of finished product you want.
id say a belt sander won't be able to touch 65% of the frame easily from bolts and brackets being in the way.
Old paint is a good primer as long as it's still stuck good so I wouldn't roll or spray on a stripper. Just remove what's loose.
power washer and a needle scaler.

 

Start with a needler and a wire wheel, then bondo any low spots and sand, I would get some spray bombs for touch ups and those hard to reach spots

make sure you block off air bags and usually sticking tin foil over air/electrical lines is easiest

 

A belt sander is not a good choice for automotive work. It will be ot get contours or around bolts and rivets without destruction. It will work fine on rails in the larger spots with no bolts or the whole rail if all the bolts are removed.

 

I would hire someone to come and sandblast it.

 

Do you wear a mask when you are using a sander?

 

Water blast or walnut shell blast.

 

First off I don’t want to sound like a party pooper but I do more of this kind of work as part of my welding and repair business than I would like to.
I have no idea what the current condition of the frame is or what kind of coating is on it but a sander will not remove rust from the pits (assuming it’s pitted) and depending on the current coating paint stripper is likely to be rather ineffective.
In my opinion if you care enough to be worried about doing a decent job you might as well do it right….if you just want to freshen things up for an auction….don’t put any more effort into it than half decent rattle cans.
Sand blasting is very easy but requires lots of air to be efficient…we are running a large reciprocating compressor…70 ish cfm at 150 psi iirc….screw compressors are preferable but as I mentioned I’m not into this as a main line businesses just end up doing some of it. Depending on how bad the rust is and how much area you have it will take me several hours to close to a day to clean everything behind the cab on a truck….and that’s not counting removing air lines and wiring and other obstructions. With a normal 5hp shop compressor I would guess you are looking at a day plus of blast time. It takes between 750 and 1000 pounds of sand. Actually we use black diamond coal slag (supposedly much less health risk and cuts much faster than conventional sand). Some type of air supplied helmet is going to be pretty much needed for a job like this in my opinion….one can be made from a welding helmet and old jeans. the sand blast will reach farther than you can spray paint so you will need to get some brushes to get it into the deep crevices or rust will start there very quickly. As far as paint is concerned sherwin Williams is probably going to be your best value. We have had very good results with kembond hs primer or macropoxy for primer and then acrolon 218 for the top coat. Neither primer will brush or roll worth a #### in my experience. Kembond is easy to spray with a half decent gun. Macropoxy is a bit thicker and can pose some challenges.
Acrolon is thick as well but thin it about 20 percent instead of the recommended 10 and it sprays fine….it’s also like it defys gravity….you can really pile it on and it won’t run. I am guessing it might brush decent because it’s pretty slow drying but I’ve never tried. Acrolon requires primer
All of my listed paints are pretty bad for people so please wear some kind of paint mask.