<VV> Artzberger on Painted Hexes

[Shaun]

Why in heaven's name would you paint the head nuts???

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "N. Joseph Potts" <pottsf at msn.com>
To: "Corvair List" <virtualvairs at skiblack.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 12:14 PM
Subject: <VV> Artzberger on Painted Hexes


> I posted a question about painting bolt heads here a few days ago, and got
> ZERO responses. One of several good possible reasons for this is that I
> asked for a pointer to a past Communique article on the subject, and my
> search of my 50 or so past issues turned up nothing resembling what I
> remembered.
>      I JUST found what I remembered in the Auto Restorer Magazine for July
> 2003, as a Reader's Tip from none other than Bill Artzberger of
Corvair...A
> History and Restoration Guide and other fame.
>      At the risk of violating his or someone else's copyright, I'll here
> post his tip, as evidence that, although my memory has almost finished
> disappearing, I am still not entirely crazy:
>
> Protect Painted Nuts & Bolts
>      One of the frustrating problems that I have had through my years of
> restoring automotibles is chipping the paint from freshly painted nuts and
> bolts while tightening them in place.
>      So, I recently decided that some experiments were in order before my
> next attempts. I soon discovered that not only was the paint chipping, the
> primer/surfacer was also chipping to the bare metal. With that, two things
> became apparent. Thick paint is not acceptable and a primer/surfacer
should
> not be used on nuts and bolts.
>      My conclusion is that there is no need for a primer/surfacer on any
> area that does not need to be sanded to a smooth surface for painting.
> Therefore, the first step was to eliminate priming the bare surface of any
> nuts or bolts.
>      In place of any primers, metal cleaner and metal conditioner was used
> [I don't know what these are - NJP]. This provided a clean thin coating of
> zinc phosphate on the surfaces which should diminish rust problems to near
> zero.
>      The second step in the process was to spray two very thin coats of
> catalyzed urethane [I don't know what this is, but I THINK it's colored
> paint] on the nut and bolt surfaces, allowing a longer than normal
dry-time
> between coats.
>      After a few days of dry-time in temperatures above 70 degrees and
> humidity of less than 60%, it was time to test this theory by tightening
> (torque to 50 lbs.) some nuts on engine block studs.
>      The nuts were first wrapped with two layers of medium-heavy plastic
> strips cut from plastic bags used in breakfast cereal boxes. The nuts were
> first torqued to 40 lbs. An inspection was made and the results were
> positive.
>      The nuts were then torqued to 50 lbs. A careful inspection showed no
> chipping of paint on any of the 24 nuts. I should also mention that a thin
> layer of grease was used between the cylinder head nuts and the cylinder
> head.
>      At this point and after a full summer of driving, there is no sign of
> paint chipping on the cylinder head nuts.
>      (It is possible the PPG DP40 or DuPont Vari-Prime [I suppose these
are
> primers, to use after all - NJP] would also work well on nuts or bolts to
be
> painted. I'll try that and report on my results.)
>
>      As you can see from my [remarks], I don't find this advice readily
> actionable, but if it's possible to use it with a spray can of lacquer,
I'm
> certainly interested in the results claimed.
>
> Joe Potts
> Miami, Florida USA
> 1966 Corsa coupe 140hp 4-speed with A/C
>
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