POR 15 Question

  • Thread starter Senile Old Fart
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Senile Old Fart

What is so magical about POR 15?
Darn near every Tom Dick & Harry on the web is set on using it.
Many even think it is the ultimate coating for freshly blasted metal.

This summer I tried to guide a co worker through a floor pan replacement on his 1969 Firebird.
I stopped by one day to see how he was doing and he told me I did it just like you said and it turned out perfect.. I drilled out the spot welds, cut it here, welded it back together like this, then I coated it with POR 15.

I told him to use SPI epoxy and nothing else....................

guess I need to chalk it up to good marketing and poor advice.
 
To answer your question, NOTHING and just so you know there are 4-5 duplicates out there under different names.

Yes, their marketing is catered to the do-it yourself folks because, no way a shop will use it.

Ads are so good its hard for me not to use it after I read one.
 
Had so many arguements against this stuff it isn't even funny. I end up just having to shut up because there is no way someone that does this stuff for a living (me) is going to tell someone who has never painted a car in their life how to do it right and use the right products. It's almost like if you need open heart surgery, go ask your barber or gas station attendant. Makes about as much sense, unless they were previously an open heart surgeon!! lol
 
I get sick of reading about it and hearing about it. I sure wish I knew how they are able to sell it so easily to so many.
 
in the business courses i took i learned the one golden rule about marketing product.

" it does not have to work.......... it just needs to sell "

i have fought undercoating all my life. give me a car completely nekid before one dressed in hide me stuff. if you cover it up it will live.
 
so just for education's sake, what are the negative's about the stuff?

In the beginning (sounds ominous) I bought a very small can sold by the local jobber who recommended it & I ended up coating the inside of a bare metal lower quarter panel patch with it & the inside of a rocker & that was it.

It was around that time I found the AB101 & SPI site's & decided to stick with epoxy only for that type of work (protection, undercoat, etc...) the negatives I read about were top coats wont adhere well, too hard a surface but not much else - what's the major downsides to it?

thx.
 
rust has enough fuel to eat through metal if you cover it up. surface rust is one thing but all these snake oils that you put over heavy rust to convert it are something a decent shop would never use. years from now young restorers are going to hate the generation that used that stuff.
 
Senile Old Fart;3543 said:
I get sick of reading about it and hearing about it. I sure wish I knew how they are able to sell it so easily to so many.

When they tell the consumer to paint over rust and it will kill the rust it becomes an easy sell. The Doityourselfer without many tools is looking for the easy way out when it comes to dealing with rust. I really wished the stuff worked as well as they claimed but I've seen the failures and oh what a mess. Once it starts letting go it becomes a moisture trap that really gets the rust growing. Not long ago a friend of mine brought some inner fenders over to final sand and paint-when I went do blow it off for the paint large pieces of primer went airborne and I noticed this black coating under the primer surfacer-yup, instead of blasting them and starting with epoxy he used a POR type coating over the surface rust. Some areas the POR stuck while other areas it didn't-what a fricken mess, he had to sandblast and start from square one-all them hours of priming and sanding gone to waste.
 
Let me set some things straight on this product.

You are Billy Joe Jim Bob and you just bought you a 1962 Chebby Mustbang to build a street rod out of. Your buddy has a 750 CI engine that puts out 1800 HP, that you are going to put in it, so you just need to do the body work. The main thing you have to deal with is the rust, so you do some reading up on the internet. Everyone knows that you only get the best, most honest information there.

Here comes a new product that will guarantee that it stops rust. The product will apply with a brush and give a super hard surface. Everyone who has a name that starts with Billy Joe says it works great. The only ones that have anything negative to say just don't know how to use the stuff.

You buy the product and apply it to the rusted frame and body surface. It hardens to a rock hard surface that you can hardly sand, so it must be working. About 1 year later you are under the car and notice a weak spot on the frame. Now obviously it can't be from the rust because you used that new rust product. You chip off the product, which comes off on chunks, and you notice cracks on the surface, and find an area that has rusted thru. When you contact the product manufacturer, they question you at length about how you applied the product. They even ask you to send them some photos of the damaged area, as they have never had any failure of their product. They then tell you that it must have been used improperly, so they will not provide any warranty relief.

What really happened here is quite simple to figure out. The product was applied on a flexible surface, and allowed to harden to a rock hard finish. When that car was driven, the frame and body flexed, expanded and contracted from the temperature. Since all materials will expand and contract at different rates, and this product has hardened to a rock hard finish, so it is not flexible at all. The product will crack and break loose from the surface of the metal. It will likely have very small cracks, so they would not be noticeable to the naked eye, but they will be there. The problem with the cracks is that they allow in the air and moisture that the product would need to seal out to prevent rust. OOPS.... The product didn't do what you thought it would do.

Rust is not a problem if you can't see it. If you use those products, don't let them move or get wet. Definately don't chip it off later.

Aaron
 
Actual case or cases and why BarryK was kicked off a forum about 8-10 years a go.

55-57 T-birds, leaked water from day they were new.
The carpet is made to you can just pull it up and hang out to dry, the floor boards have baby pinholes to drain the water.

The floors were painted from the factory and will show a light rust (surface) as they age.
Mine in the 90's I sandblasted, epoxied and based cleared, still perfect last I looked about two years ago.

So on this forum, some guy pulls up his carpet and see rust (surface) and fines this great new product #15 and brushes on, writes and show pictures of how great this product is. W ell explained how it would plug the drain holes and next time he saw a bubble he would be replacing floor pans.
I was shot down and in next month at least a dozen people , pulled their carpets and announced they did the same thing.

Almost two years to date, the first guy writes, him and his wife were driving and they noticed a bubble on her side under the carpet, he pulled the carpet broke the bubble and found the pan had rusted through.
First forum I was ever on and in my usual "sugar coated" response I posted all my old links and said, I told you and because you were so arrogant and brushed me off as a quack, you should be able to replace the floor pans for about $3-4000 at your favorite body shop.

I was banded that day.
 
maybe that's why i get in so much trouble.............. guilt by association .
:confused:

got the pics on the vette. yes sir somebody banged the corner at the factory .
 
Barryk;3869 said:
Actual case or cases and why BarryK was kicked off a forum about 8-10 years a go.

55-57 T-birds, leaked water from day they were new.
The carpet is made to you can just pull it up and hang out to dry, the floor boards have baby pinholes to drain the water.

The floors were painted from the factory and will show a light rust (surface) as they age.
Mine in the 90's I sandblasted, epoxied and based cleared, still perfect last I looked about two years ago.

So on this forum, some guy pulls up his carpet and see rust (surface) and fines this great new product #15 and brushes on, writes and show pictures of how great this product is. W ell explained how it would plug the drain holes and next time he saw a bubble he would be replacing floor pans.
I was shot down and in next month at least a dozen people , pulled their carpets and announced they did the same thing.

Almost two years to date, the first guy writes, him and his wife were driving and they noticed a bubble on her side under the carpet, he pulled the carpet broke the bubble and found the pan had rusted through.
First forum I was ever on and in my usual "sugar coated" response I posted all my old links and said, I told you and because you were so arrogant and brushed me off as a quack, you should be able to replace the floor pans for about $3-4000 at your favorite body shop.

I was banded that day.

That is humorous, and funny how you get kicked off for being honest.. What has the world came to... lol.
 
Thats OK, don't miss that forum at all, I was the first person to put an AOD behind a 312 in a T-bird, all said it could not be done because of T-Birds X-Frame and room without cutting.
Took me two months but I did it with a 1/32 on both sides to spare and it was the moderator that baned me, found out and emailed me wanting me to post how I did it.

I could see it now, I post it in detail and some idiot would just say, it can't be done.
 
I have used POOR 15 on the frame and some other parts on old Bessie before I found out about SPI. If I knew all the issues I would of gone with SPI black epoxy instead.

I sure hope it holds up because I don't want to have to tear her down again because of failure. :(
 
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