Painting a Ford 4500

[shopteacher 1]

I have an old hoe - I love saying that!

She was painted with a brush before I bought it. I am not looking to do a restoration grade paint job. I am not against painting her again with a brush. She has rust starting to come through the paint. I was thinking of taking a section at a time and cleaning it up with a wire wheel on a grinder and painting that section. I have spray equipment, but didn't want to bother with masking off cylinders etc.

I am looking for ideas of what others have done and what materials they have used.

 

[Steve Frazier]

A roller will do a better job than a brush if you keep it saturated

 

[bowen]

She was painted with a brush before I bought it. I am not looking to do a restoration grade paint job. I am not against painting her again with a brush. She has rust starting to come through the paint.

When rust is painted over it makes the job much harder later. You almost have to grind the spots off or strip them with paint remover to get to the underlying rust. And it will not be all exposed. If you see some there will be more underneath.
Then use Ospro or some brand of rust treatment depending of what kind of paint you are going to use. Some paint will not stick well to some rust treatments. Finding the right combination is not real easy.
The very best products are expensive and sold by the automobile finish companies. These normally have a hardener to mix with the paint.
I have been using xylene based primer and paint without hardner partially because of the cost.
Once you mix the hardner in to spray whatever you have left over is trash, because you can't just put it back in the can.

These best way is to take whatever parts off and work with a few sections at the time, painting individual parts as possible.
Purple Dragon is a good product to use first to clean the heavy grease. :scool (This is different to Purple Power which is cheaper..)
Then after sanding I use laquer thinner to do a final cleaning. Paint will not stick to grease.

 

[shopteacher 1]

Thanks Bowen for the info - What about products like por15?

 

[bowen]

Thanks Bowen for the info - What about products like por15?

I have never used that product. Just do some research or at least test some small parts with whatever primer/paint you use.
You will find horror stories about painting cars etc and the paint not sticking.
On my Case 470 tractor I used Ospro then some automotive "Self Etching Primer" which was a mistake. With a thumbnail test the primer came off almost like dust.
I had to wipe/sand almost all this primer off and then use a different primer.


Some will tell you to use a damp cloth on the metal even after using laquer thinner to clean the oil off.


This is a deck top on a Snapper Comet mower I am restoring. You can see it was rusty, and they spray painted it in the past covering the rust.
It is bleeding rust all over. I actually had to strip this off to the bare metal. Hopefully your hoe is not this bad.


Get all the rust off you can and then the rust treatment will turn the deep rust to a black color. You can see some black specs on this part before I primed it.
It has a chemical reaction with the rust turning in into something similar to lead.
On real rusty posts/farm implements or whatever you can use just the rust treatment and not paint it at all. It will be black all over and lasts pretty well unpainted.