To primer or leave bare aluminum, that is the question

[Roesbery]

Just a thought. Since you don't really care about pretty. Use rattle cans of Zinc Chromate. Will look terrible at first but will darken with age and can be touched up as needed over the years. Have used it on aluminum boat parts used in salt water and it is good at preventing corrosion. Say it is OD color. Charlie

[FredMa]

You know you want to go full camo over zinc chromate but are just afraid to say it. Must be afraid of the redneck stigma.

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

No I am absolutely not afraid of OD green. In fact I developed a whole paint scheme based on painting the fuselage with OD primer. I think I shared this before.

What I don't want to do is cause more trouble for myself maintaining it and trouble latter should the AC ever get painted better.

[blueldr]

How many of you have considered cleaning the bare aluminum with "Brightener" only? This will provide a clean, new metal, look, and is not at all as dificult to maintain as a polished finish.

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

Just wanted to give you guys a feeling for peeling paint.

The paint has been coming of the taili section for some time but the cowl was pretty good till last fall. There has been no attempt to actually remove this paint. It is coming off on its own.

[ralphyoung]

I sure do like the attention I get when I roll in for fuel at the FBO. Been using Nuvite. http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt32 ... 63ff4b.jpg It is a 48 with cloth wings.

[ralphyoung]

http://i624.photobucket.com/albums/tt32 ... 6ffjpg.jpg

[bagarre]

Just wanted to give you guys a feeling for peeling paint.

Random Orbital Buffer with some heavy duty scotch brite pads and you can polish that paint in no time

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

Random Orbital Buffer with some heavy duty scotch brite pads and you can polish that paint in no time

What a "4 belt sander with 50 grit would smooth down the rivets faster.

Seriously here is the thing. I'm extremely reluctant to use even Scotch Brite as I do not want to remove any Alcad that might remain though as you can tell the "professional" paint shop seemed to use 80 grit sand paper for their prep looking at the swirl marks in the remaining paint.

I plan on starting with a pressure wash which should remove some more paint. Then use Aircraft Paint Stripper (from Pep Boys BL), plexi scrappers and a careful wash afterwards. Scotch Brite will only be used lightly if required. The big problem has always been logistics. The airplane is kept on a private grass field with no running water or electricity unless the owner offers it and he hasn't though he often wonders out loud why we don't paint the plane in place. While he is far from a tree hugger environmentalist I also wonder how much paint chips and stripping chemicals he'll tolerate on his field. (not that I want to cause a new super fund site either)

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

Cool I'll check out the Citristrip.

Back to just primering. Yes primer is porous, and I wouldn't expect it to protect steel parts. But aluminum won't rust under primer. Won't the primer offer protection of the aluminum corroding? Wouldn't primer painted aluminum corrode slower than bare aluminum?

BTW what color are the window frames. Are they aluminum and left natural by the factory? I never thought about it. I know the steel landing gear parts are painted Gull Gray.

[Ryan Smith]

Arash,

What sort of paint is on that 206? I've used CitruStrip on some model airplanes with mixed success. I stripped a hand-me-down canopy to one of my competition models that was painted with PPG single-stage (I believe Concept) and it came off beautifully. I tried to strip an older F3A model of mine that had been painted with DuPont Chromabase (base coat/clear coat), and it wouldn't touch it. These are automotive paints, not aerospace paints.

Granted, I think that in Bruce's case, it would work just fine. I've not used it on metal, but with the fiberglass/carbon fiber parts I was using, I neutralized the parts after stripping with mineral spirits.

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

It is quite impressive as every trace of paint is gone, even around the raised rivet heads. After stripping, he's polished test sections with good success too. To be fair, he did mention that there is a trick to the technique that definitely makes a difference and saves time. I didn't ask what they were as I had no such ambitions myself.

Arash, you need to get right down to that airport and find out what the "trick" is.

[GAHorn]

The 205 had a small passenger-door instead of the large utility door, and it had the IO-470-S engine (260 hp) instead of the IO-520-A (285 hp.) It was essentially an outgrowth of the fixed-gear, non-cantilevered C-210. Only produced from late '62 to '63.
The 206 was introduced and offered the larger cargo/utility door and better seating/performance. I owned '64 C-206 SN: 0026 and a friend owned a '63 205. The 206 actually burned 4 gals less fuel carrying 400 lbs more cabin-load on a simultaneous/parallel trip of 3 hours to west TX one day. The only other difference was the 205 cruised at 8500' while I cruised at 10,500 in the 206 (smoother/cooler air.) We took off one behind the other and landed the same.

While confirming the above info I was reminded of the famous accident (not germane to this discussion, but another reminder of such things) July 24, 1972 near Aspen, Colorado, in which a 27-year-old student pilot with a total of 39 hours of flying time flew into a blind canyon and stalled the aircraft while trying to turn around (density altitude of about 13,000') , killing all four people on board. Among the passengers was wealthy playboy, entrepreneur, racing driver and developer Lance Reventlow, who was a Woolworth heir, son of famous actress/model Betty Hutton (and step-son of Cary Grant) and the husband of former Mouseketeer and actress Cheryl Holdridge (after he divorced first wife actress Jill St. John.)
While the NTSB identified the PIC as the student pilot, the board did not make much of the fact that passenger Reventlow was also a pilot. They were supposedly looking at real estate he wished to develop into a ski resort in the area.

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

Well we tried the CitrisStrip today and our paint is tuffer than I thought. I also bought a gallon of regular methyl chloride type (MCT) paint stripper to compare against the CitriStrip. Here is what happened.

Following the instructions I applied a 10" band of the MCT remover to the bottom of a door. I then generously coated the rest of the door with CitrisStrip.

The MCT instructions said to wait 15 to 30 minutes till the paint lifted and scrap it off. The CitriStrip instructions say to leave it sit for 30 minutes or until the paint started to lift but remove before 24 hours.

So I waited 30 minutes and observed the paint. The MCT remover band was all bubbled as expected but the CitriStrip had barley changed. I tried to scrape the CitriStrip side to see if the paint was at all being removed and it had barely softened the paint and was not ready to be removed. I left it on. I then scrapped off the MCT and it performed as expected. I recoated the band to remove the remaining paint.

After waiting a full hour the CitriStrip still for the most part, looked the same. There was a few small areas that had lifted and a few of the paint cracks had curled. I cleaned the MCT band again removing nearly all the paint. I waited an additional hour and tried the CitriStrip side. There was really no change from the hour before. I washed of the CitriStrip and put the remainder away. Recoated the rest of the door with MCT remover and stripped the rest of the door.

At just under twice the price of the MCT remover, the CitriStrip was a huge disappointment on my paint. It did smell nice though.

[c170b53]

I've used a similar product Bruce, and it worked much better when lightly sprayed on and as well worked better at elevated temperatures. The results are also dependant on the type of paint being removed. I went at it using the cheap Citrus like stuff as its environmentally safe and used stuff we call Alien Goo sparingly to remove the donuts around the rivet heads as the Goo is bad from anything which lives. I'll get the real name of the stuff but it make take bit before I report back.