Finished painting this morning with the chassis 3 inches from my nose and Hammerite running down the brush a bit , three sides of all front lower tubes. Checking back in my Stylus '' jobs to do '' diary , I note that I last did this in 2006 while the engine and box were out going from 200bhp to 231bhp --- complete engine bay chassis end on all sides of tubes plus the bulkhead .
This time all upper faces of the tubes were fine so not bad really because the rust was from scratches under the car , over years of competition with jumping kerbs and one or two off's . It only takes one mark on a tube going through the paint to set the peeling off or previous paint and my car is VERY low at 70mm's under the front lower rail.
When I did some touching up before 2006 on front and rear chassis , it was down to the powder coating process being done on a '' not very clean '' chassis , probably stood outside before treatment and didn't bother thoroughly cleaning it first. You could tell because there were no scratches as the chassis was 150mm's off the ground in those days and the powder coat just fell off --- that was in 2003
If I were building another kit now I wouldn't bother with powder coating , as you just cannot trust it will be prepared properly . Far better to clean , treat and paint it yourself plus it's so simple to touch up if you make any modifications with welding involved. Another point that ''Andy Bailey'' made me aware of after I'd built my car , was that if it had been painted in a light grey paint as his Stylus was rather than powder coated ,
--- then you could easily have seen any chassis cracks appearing after a track incident etc as dirt fills those cracks and so easily seen. That's just experience that you get from being a chassis engineer at Mclaren though --- RIP Andy
HINDSIGHT is a great tool if only it was the first tool you picked out of the draw
