Exposed Epoxy Longevity

A

Alt240

I am about to coat everything in epoxy from bare metal on my car. Everything is stripped and off the car. I can get at the back sides of the doors, fenders, hood and trunk.
My question is if I should scuff the back sides of these panels, coat with epoxy, then reassemble the car for blocking, base, and clear? I know that in sunlight the epoxy is good for five years or so. But when it is exposed to sunlight what happens? Does it retain all its protective qualities and lose its color? Or does it start letting moisture through?

I basically just want to know if I am OK leaving this epoxy exposed to the elements on the backsides of the panels or if it will eventually allow rust to form.

Thanks!
 
When you say backside, I assume you are talking panels not exposed to light, like inside trunk or engine compartment?
If you are best thing you can do is leave in epoxy, remember if you can't get a tan where the panel is located, it is not getting UV's.

When epoxy breaks down, it chalks and if you have a few coats on there, you just sand the dead top layer, re-coat and you start all over, this I'm talking about is outside panels, such as trim around the windshield a common use of epoxy.
 
Alt240;15425 said:
I basically just want to know if I am OK leaving this epoxy exposed to the elements on the backsides of the panels or if it will eventually allow rust to form.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

SPI Epoxy is used on vehicle undersides, suspension components, engine compartments... the durability is great and it offers excellent protection against corrosion. The only areas you need to worry about is wheel houses and fenders that are open without a liner or skirt-high wear areas where there's a lot of stone impact etc... These areas you'll want to apply something over the epoxy to offer some good chip protection like bedliner coating, chip guard, rubberized undercoating, body schutz.
 
Perfect, thanks a ton for those answers. When it chalks up, is that referring to just a color change? Or will it break down and lose its protective capabilities? And I do mean inside the engine compartment and so on. No sunlight.

Also, I will be applying the epoxy to the skirt and fender wells (they were rolled and starting to corrode inside) as well. I planned on using a rubberized coating too, any suggestions on brand? Or perhaps a more effective product and brand? The main reason I even started down this road was for rust protection.
 
Can't go wrong with SPI bedliner for the wheel wells. I've used a good bit of 3m body shutz for this also. Sometimes the shutz matches factory a little better but you have to really pile it on. It IS paintable, but it will soak up the paint some, like some factory coatings out there (talking old car stuff here). I use it alot inside mopar trunks on the inside of the quarters.

Bob, have you used any of the FUSOR sprayable coatings for this? Comes in the same caulking tubes as seam sealer but goes into a special air gun. Never can seem to get that real THICK look of factory. The shutz is close.
 
Jeremy, I've used the fuzor and also the 3M urethane sprayable seam sealers, used them lots when I was doing collision repair on the bigger hits where trunk floor,rails and quarters were being replaced-it made a nice quick robotic looking pattern on the seams and I bet it would also work well for a chip resistant coating. Bond strength to on day old epoxy is unreal. I've played around with the urethane sealers quite a bit and I use them for a lot more things than they were designed for. Squeeze some into a mix cup and add some urethane reducer- load it in your spray gun and shoot it over epoxy primer within the recoat window and let it stand overnight, seal it with epoxy the next day and apply your paint. Makes an unbelievably flexible and durable anti chip coating that is smooth and undetectible for use on rocker undersides, wheel opening lips, etc... I had a wire loom hook on a 68 Z-28 firewall that had suffered an engine fire and burned the black plastic coating off, the hook is welded on but needed to be recoated. Fusor black urethane seam sealer mixed with urethane reducer loaded in my primer gun fixed the problem-looks oem and is bonded to the spi epoxy better than the oem was to bare metal. Outside the box again...........
 
If you wrote a book, I'd buy it. LOL! Would have never even thought that. MOPAR has the same black coating on those hooks on the firewall and inside the trunk area, great idea. Small details.

I am doing a 70 GTX right now and might have to play around with some of the fuzor and see if I can get the look a little better than the shutz.
 
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