When the gates were made, by a local blacksmith he red-oxide-ed them and they were then painted gloss white. I daresay that the initial rust removal from the then-new steel was less than perfect. ~12 years on and several more coats of white gloss and the rust has taken hold underneath so comes through again quickly.
They are going to have to be shot / sand blasted to begin with.
My query was more what to do after. To finish I want a darkish green matt colour rather than the original white, and I just wondered if there was a better treatment than paint, as I dont want to have to do it all again in a short time.
I could possibly have them hot dip galvanised, but what paint / treatment could I put on that after?
Almost anything will do after that. The galvanising is the key. That stops the rusting and 99.999% of visible damage to painted iron and steel is caused by water trapped below the paint rusting the iron and flaking the paint off.
I think ther are plenty off spray on primers and you can hit Halfords for wataver coloyrs of paint you want to go on top.
Powder coating is only good in that it provides an almost completely imrermeable layer over the steel, but once its breached, the steel will rust just the same.
I used to work for teh Marconiui company years ago, and as youngster we used to frequent the 'reclaim' yard where old chasis were thrown awy to rot in the rain. Zinc or cadmium platinted chassis would be almost pristine except where scratched, and would then show thin streaks of rust. They din't use glvanising tho. Powder coated front panels would be fine except where scratched, and then they would be covered in rust spreading out underneath, unless they had been zinc or cad plated first.
Cad plating is I think now illegal due to tehe poisonous nature of the scrap. Zinc plaing especially if passivated is an excellent surface, and galvanising is almost as good. I amn prettyu sure that teh Crtiial window frames of te 5;s were galvanised. Many are still doing the job today.
You can just get it passivated in teh first place, or use primers designed to do that - not sure 'etch' primer is what you want. Possibly something like chromic acid to make a surface latyer of zinc chromate?
Look up passivated zinc plating - that does paint fairly weel.
Car bodies are hot zinc dipped these days I think. They must have a way to avoid leaving them outside for two years before paintin.... :-)
Yes and no. I think galvanising is hot dipping, whereas 'plating' is normally held to mean electroplating. Not precise use of language, I agree. Galvanising always shows a marked crystal stricture and a rtaher uneven layer, but its quick and cheap. Electrolating gives a far better finish, and I suspect, a slightly better molecular structure.
Here is something a google serach picked up that is relevant
"Some coating resins, certain polyesters for example, are incompatible with zinc surfaces. When applied over non-passivated zinc surfaces they react with the zinc resulting in blisters or pinholes in the cured film. This can occur on galvanized, galvaneel and galvalume surfaces as well as zinc die-castings. There are at least two solutions for this problem, passivating the zinc surface and changing the organic coating. One solution is to eliminate the incompatibility with zinc surfaces by passivation. Application of pretreatments such as chromates, zinc phosphates and certain iron phosphates will passivate the surfaces allowing them to be coated without causing blisters or pinholes. Another solution is to change the coating material to one that is compatible with zinc surfaces"
It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:
Heh. I recall when the Sierra was lauched - for about two years all the abandoned WW2 airfields in the east of the country were jammed with nose to tail Sierras in serried ranks 'cos nobody liked them.
Nor did I (at first), but being 6' 2" was too tall for a Renault 25, or Vauxhall or Citroen equivalents at the time and as my Boss had a MKV Cortina Est they didn't think a low mileage s/h SD1 Rover was suitable for the Senior Support Engineer at the time ;-)
22 Years later the 2L GL Est Sierra is still used (and still parked in the road) daily .. ;-)
I hated the Sierra and managed to avoid having to have one. In an ugliness competition it would make Ann Widdecombe look like a beautiful angel!
When my company car choice came up after the Cortina Mk IV came to an end I jumped to the Vauxhall Cavalier. The top of the range CD was on the list and (shock! horror!) it had a sun roof plus some other executive toys like electric windows. Vauxhall were trying to break into the corporate market and downgraded the price of the CD.
I can still remember that sun roof to this day - you cranked it open with a huge lever, and it was tin - not glass.
But sun roofs were not common in everyday cars back then :)
After the Cavalier CD I had the Cavalier SRi. Now that was definitely the boy racer car of its day in the company car park!
Isn't this a misnomer in this country? I've always found them to be "rain roof"s, due to their tendency to leak and general uselessness. Apart from for inserting large long (5M) items into the car (oh, and decapitating children when they stand on the seat, stick their heads out and you stop suddenly!)
No offence taken. There were only a limited number of different models we had on the company car choice 20 years ago so it wasn't an open field. And given that I was in my early 20's at the time, being trusted with something like a Cavalier CD was a bit of an honour because I could never have afforded something with that sort of spec out of my own pocket (in those days having a company car meant something - today its worth has been seriously eroded by taxation to the point it is no longer worthwhile, mostly).
Ironically it set the scene for nearly every car that followed (compared with all the square boxes at the time)?
I think I tried one .. hit my dead on the sunroof lip .. ;-(
The one in my Sierra was glass .. just tilted though .. and had the cranky lever thingy ;-)
Indeed ...
I was too young for the CD at that time .. ;-)
I had the Cavalier SRi. Now that was definitely
Very true. Had one for a week between the Cortina MKIII and the Sierra ... couldn't wait to give it back! I was used to being able to pull away quickly at a wet T junction .. not just sitting there with the front wheels spinning! Front wheels for steering, rear wheels for driving, like they do on dragsters, tractors, F1 cars, lorries, motorbikes, cycles or anything else that needs to 'get on with it'!
And why do Landrovers go to RWD in 2WD mode if FWD is so good (all the bits are there to do so?)
If you want a nice compact shopping car and don't have to fix it yerself front wheel drive is (probably) fine? ;-) (well if you don';'t mind re-booting CV joints, jelly gearsticks, broken exhaust pipes,
*engine* oil in yer gearbox and diff .. oh and the engine jammed in sideways that is. And that's ignoring the poor weight distribution .. )
The first front wheel drive car I've ever owned is this (100 pound)
170K, Rover 218SD (1.9 non turbo). Even this gutless front heavy diesel powered thing wheelspins in the wet if you try to be slightly 'spirited' (what's that all about then?)
Oh and what's this going straight ahead at corners (no matter what you do with the wheel) all about?
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