LMTV Military vehicle restoration... Ready to learn but need some initial thoughts please.

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DTinNC

Hello, I appreciate the forums here as well as all of the skills and knowledge that goes into coatings.

My background: I'm coming from the Cerakote world (coatings for firearms) and I'm trying to understand the best solutions for SPI coatings over top of/in place of the CARC (Chemical Agent Resistive Coating), bare metal and rust. Majority of materials to coat will be steel and aluminum.

Project: I was able to get my hands on a demil Military truck recently and now have ~3 months or so before I'm able to pick it up due to the background check etc for the End Use Certification process. I have read some and watched a bunch of videos on similar projects to acclimate to the steps required.

Thank you in advance for any help & advice.
Doug
 
I spray CARC on a weekly basis, nothing really special about it. Its either a 2 part water based polyurethane or a one part solvent based product. The water based mixes 2:1 with catalyst and ends up being a frothy coating that shrinks terribly.

The only special part of it other than being less than 3 gloss is after decontamination with a Chlorine type solution, there is not supposed to be any residue left over of the chemical agent it might have been hit with. The chemical agent resistant coating does not make the truck chemical agent resistant, it just makes it so its safe for the next guy to touch it after it is decontaminated.

So in a way, it tells me there are wetting agents in there somehow to allow full release of the chemical agent, it makes you think it will not be happy with another paint on top. If you go to blast it, you are going to just watch it fly off and expose the epoxy primer underneath that is required to apply the top coat.

You follow the rules with SPI epoxy, you need to start with bare metal, so nothing over the top unless you are just going with a 2K primer.

Its honestly one of the easiest paints I have come across to blast off. If you just want to scuff it and shoot it, you need to choose an epoxy out there that is either direct to metal, or applies over previous coatings. When they rework CARC in the field, desert, wherever, its just recoating with the same product after scuffing. There are plenty of places that will sell CARC to anyone if you want to keep it original, its probably worse than any matte or flat black out there since it scuffs very easily.
 
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