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Powder coating issue
Yesterday, when drilling the elevator horns on our newly built RV-7A tail, the power coating came off in large sections as the drill bit exited the hole.
I was easily able to flake off additional large pieces only to find poorly prepped and somewhat rusty bare metal underneath. This was a bit disappointing as this was a new build tail with parts bought late in 2016. We will of course, clean up the bare metal and prime and paint the areas. We shouldn't have to and if this is the quality of the powder coated parts, I will try to get bare parts in the future and do them myself. Anyone had a similar issue and how did you resolve it? |
Sounds like a bad individual part. I've had a few of Van's powdercoated parts chip slightly when drilled but nothing like you describe. I know there is a matching paint color but not sure how/where to find it.
I plan to eventually paint most of the powdercoated parts so have mostly scuffed them a bit and touched up with primer where there is bare metal. |
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Thanks!
I appreciate the info.
My gripe is the poor prep prior to powder coating. I would prefer bare metal versus an unknown adhesion to the substrate. I have powder coating equipment and if I had known, I would have recoated the parts myself. Now that the elevators are built, it's too late. |
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Every time I have called Van's with an issue with a part the response has been professional, the response more/better than I expected, and always with someone who is articulate in my own language - in other words a superior customer experience. I recently copied Mitch after I had called the parts department when I discovered that a part needed for a weekend marathon of work had been replaced in my kit by a very similarly numbered part (I missed the difference on my own inventory). Without my asking the part was shipped priority overnight on a Friday - I had it Saturday around 10AM and "built on". Sorry to hijack your thread Krea - your frustration is evident but I'm betting Van's will do what they can to put it right. |
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Thanks for the advice
Thanks Turner and Bill.
In the grand scheme, it's not a big deal - especially now that I know. I can deal with that. Big difference in left and right welded yokes too - over 5 degrees. That required a full day of work at Synergy getting the elevator up and down limit stops perfect. Building the stops per plan wasn't even close! But hey, this is supposed to be fun! (And it is, even with a few frustrating events.) |
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Proper pretreatment/passivation of metals prior to powder coating is costly and it is naive to believe that powder coating subcontractors will not cut corners in this area if they are asked to compete purely on price without a written specification. Many builders these days are using adhesives to bond their acrylic canopies to their powder coated slider frames and they have absolutely no empirical evidence that the powdercoating supplied by Vans is adequately bonded to the metal underneath or that the metal is properly passivated to prevent corrosion under-creep. |
Rather than prime and paint, I'd suggest you take them to a local powder coater and get them blasted and then re-coated. You'll really like powder coat on your steel pieces and you can even get them done to match your paint scheme instead of the default off-white. I've never had a problem with the pieces from Vans but I've done a few of the bare pieces (steps, for example) and even aluminum fab (you can find pictures of my reworked battery mount somewhere in these forums). I haul a box of parts to my local guy and it usually costs $20. When the nose-gear mod for the -10 came out, I had mine welded in (didn't trust the shim to just sit there in place) and then had the entire engine mount blasted and redone for less than $100 as I recall.
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