Maybe someone will be interested in some of this.

This front bench seat bottom was taken in for cleaning and rust removal by electrolysis. If that is something you are not familiar with, the process is a lot different than using acid and this process can be used on steel, aluminum, spring steel, and other metals as well. It doesn't harm the metal and has no affect on paint adhesion.








It does a nice job of removing what ever contaminates are there except lead, without affecting the metal surface. The metal is what it is, whether its smooth, pitted, scratched, or cracked, the process doesn't do anything to change the surface texture.




















The pitted areas are a little darker than the smooth areas, but those areas can be easily scratched if desired, leaving just clean shiny metal. So the process does clean, but the metal is also mostly smooth, except for those pitted areas where the rust was. I didn't want to sand this whole thing so it was decided to try Tamco DTA (direct to anything) epoxy primer, since they claim it will chemically bond without sanding.

This seat was not painted when new, but may have had some type of temporary protectant on it so it was basically bare metal, and one of the color options for Tamco epoxy is clear. So it made perfect sense to me to try their epoxy because it has to provide some kind of protection, and that would be better than it originally started out with. Certainly better than aerosol can clear.

So it was washed with a liquid alkaline cleaner that is compatible with both the epoxy and the electrolysis system, just to remove any finger prints, dirt, and the rust inhibitor, then dried and allowed to sit overnight in the heated shop. This epoxy is very thin in the can, and only requires 10 min induction time. I gave it an hour anyway, and sprayed two coats, allowing the first coat to flash for an hour.











These two test panels were acid stripped, rinsed, and dried, then blasted in the cabinet with well worn medium crushed glass. Maybe not fair, but it is a test.





I was told that the clear epoxy is not crystal clear, and this shows that it is also darker on rough surfaces.





I was instructed to allow it to cure for a least 7 days before testing. But after 4 days I thought I would check and see how its going with a small sharp screw driver to scrape a little in the corner of one of the test panels. It didn't chip off like I thought it would, so a cross hatch scratch was put on with a sharp razor blade knife, and 3/4 inch auto body tape pressed down firmly and ripped off.





It held very well for just 4 days of curing, with only a little chipping next to the cuts, so I tried to scrap it off with a razor blade across the small square cuts and some did come off but not all.





After nine days I tried to scrap the area next to the cross hatch pattern and couldn't get much primer to come off, so I heated it to 115* and tried again. I was able to scrap some epoxy off, but had to rock the blade side to side. Surprisingly it didn't come off in long strips.





Keep in mind this is a test panel that was blasted before applying the epoxy. I was not able to get completely down to bare metal.





The seat which had no scratch profile at all was tested after 9 days with a cross hatch cut and tape.





All the razor blades were new high quality blades





The manufacturer says it will stick to any smooth surface but they recommend a good scratch pattern, and I wouldn't want to put it on an exterior panel without sanding first. IMO, I think the adhesion with out sanding is more than adequate for uses like this seat, inside panels, and other protected areas without much worry about sanding. It was also impressive over the lightly blasted metal.

http://www.tamcopaint.com/info.html

Great review.