Pete Lord
Sounds perfect, did you consider powder coat instead of paint?
How about posting some pictures...?
& Welcome to the forum... :smile:KennyV
How to paint a mower?
- Thread starter Bethieboo
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Pete Lord
Sounds perfect, did you consider powder coat instead of paint?
How about posting some pictures...?
& Welcome to the forum... :smile:KennyV
Lots of sandpaper to sand off any rust spots, being careful not to go all the way down to the body work, unless you want to do that. Then buy some automotive paint and paint like you were painting your house, in my case, most of the paint ends up on myself or on the floor 
Hi Kenny,
I am also retired, in my case after 40 years with the same company
Power Coating is a great suggestion and I did consider it.
1 Power Coating is not necessarily air tight as it is platelets that are melted to each other and there is the possibility of voids that will allow the start of oxidation.
2 Think about the total surface area of all painted parts on a 61" Scag Turf Tiger. The quote I got from the local power coater was "I can't handle anything that large or that heavy"
3 The KBS if applied right will be so hard and air tight that it can't be scratched with a screwdriver once cured.
There are a couple cons,
1 The second coat and the top coat must be applied between 2 hours and 4 hours of each other for the desired cross linking to occur.
2 It's catalyzed by absorbing moisture out of the air, so once the can is open, saving any for more than a week or two is impossible.
3 It's very similar to Gorilla Glue except it doesn't foam and expand while curing.
4 The spray gun must be thoroughly cleaned between coats, other wise you will throw it away. There is no solvent for the cured material.
5 The cured paint is not UV stable, it will chalk and bleach in the sun if not top coated with an opaque finish, although, that doesn稚 appear to hurt it's rust sealing performance.
It's not expensive as far as urethane primers and finishes are concerned.
Check it out on their WEB page. Stop Rust - Gas Tank Sealer - Gas Tank Liner - KBS Coatings - RustSeal in Colors
I have no affiliation except as a very satisfied customer.
I'll take some pictures as soon as I get the new tires on it. The old ones were a disaster waiting to happen as I have steep grassy hills that end in creaks on three sides of my property.
Regards
Pete
RobertBrown
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I hope you have before and after pictures. Sounds like a big project. What did you do about the motor?
Hi Robert,
Several years I had a business where I owned and operated 6 Tune UP Shops and a related business building engines for professional circle track race cars. So working on the engine was very easy as I have all the tools to measure the dimensions of every part with great precision and make corrections when necessary..
The engine was completely freshened-up by disassembling and cleaning every thing, measuring, then reassembly. I didn't find anything that needed immediate replacement, although I did re-hone the cylinders and replace the piston rings. It had cast iron cylinder liners not the nickel alloy problematic liners, thank you God. Even Mercedes Benz and Jaguar had problems with those things.. I also replaced all of the seals and gaskets.
I am currently running Motul 300 V oil. It is made from vegetable esters and acts as a very powerful solvent to clean any of the bits of varnish I missed. Don't confuse high detergency with acting like a solvent. The detergent in modern oils is there to keep any by-products of combustion in suspension so that the filter can remove them from the system. It's purpose is to keep the engine clean not to clean up after it's curded up.
Oils based on esters have one downfall, they are a bit hydroscopic (i.e., absorbs water out of the air) As long as the engine is run at least once a week and for a long enough period to get the oil hot enough to vaporize any water that had been absorbed.
My experience has been that esters based oils will help to heal much of the havoc caused by a very irresponsible maintenance program and the use of group III mineral oil. I致e used Red Line for years, it is also an ester based oil. Recently Motul came out with a new formula based on the combination of two different types of esters. They claim great improvements. So this fall I switched all of my vehicles over to it and will monitor the performance closely.
Motul was founded by J.D. Rockefeller in 1853 and marketed their lubricants through Standard oil. They started exporting lubricants in 1932 and they actually marketed a synthetic oil in 1953. In 1957 Supra Penn bought all of the Motul patents and renamed the company Motul. In 1971 Motul marketed the first 100% synthetic oil, and today does business in 80 different countries. They are head quartered in France today.
They are the pioneers and risk takers of the synthetic lubrication business and they continue to be the innovators that every one else is chasing. But be careful they have 20 to 30 different formulas for engine oil and some are plane old Group III mineral oils with lots of paraffin and VII痴 just like every one else. So read the specifications and look for the statement that the oil is made from Esters or Group V base stocks.
Wow how did I get off on that track, sorry
Pete
RobertBrown
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Don't apologize Pete, thanks! Thats why I read these forums, to learn...and hopefully to help someone else.
I'm a liitle smarter now, when it comes to lubricants anyway. I still don't know the difference between napthenic and ester based oils but I know who to ask if I need to get that info. Heck I can never remember what the w is for:laughing:.
When I paint a mower, I reach for the "Krylon", but only if it's on sale
Hi Touree,
You are correct it is a hassle. I bought the wrecked SCAG for $500 thinking that I could fix it up with out too much trouble. At the time I had no intension of painting it or for that matter rebuilding the whole thing.
Six years ago when I bought it, the first thing I did was to disassemble the mower to evaluate how many things really needed to be fixed. I was so discouraged that I piled the pieces in the back corner of one of my garages and forgot about it for 6 years. I had a 421cu/in 750HP RX7 Drag Race car to complete and that was going to require all of my attention. Having completed that project and figuring out that a 74 year old shouldn't be driving a 200MPH car I sold it and needed a project so I turned my attention to the SCAG. Early this summer the adventure began,.
Interestingly, it was a real adventure as I had forgotten everything I learned by taking it apart and it became a challenge to figure out how it should be reassembled. Many things were changed, for example, the hydraulic system is a bad design, one should never require a pump to suck oil through a filter, and if the integrity of the pumps and motors were to be preserved, the return lines from the pumps needed to be filtered before the oil went into the reservoir. Also the roll bar got in the way of the tubular control links to the pumps so I had to gin up some flexible push-pull control cables like is used to shift automatic transmissions, to handle that choir. Both wheel motors were trashed and required rebuilding as well as the pumps. The parts cost to do those jobs was out of this world so I make and heat treat several of them. For example, the valve bodies / surface plates that the pump cylinders ride on required resurfacing and for the first time I got to use my surfacer to flatten them out. And in the end they were flat within .0002 inches. . For the first time in over 20 years, all of the machines in my shop had to be used and it became a real adventure.
So to your question about painting. After investing so many hours in the rebuild it didn't feel right not to give it a first class paint job. PPG's Deltron Concept Acrylic Urathane paint is a first class paint that will out perform most base coat / clear coat systems. To be honest, the only reason any one should use a base coat /clear coat system is if the paint has metalic flakes. And SCAG Orange is definitely not a metallic.
Regards
Pete
Don't apologize Pete, thanks! Thats why I read these forums, to learn...and hopefully to help someone else.
I'm a liitle smarter now, when it comes to lubricants anyway. I still don't know the difference between napthenic and ester based oils but I know who to ask if I need to get that info. Heck I can never remember what the w is for:laughing:.
When I paint a mower, I reach for the "Krylon", but only if it's on sale
Hi Robert,
If I remember correctly, the "W" stands for Winter. I never understood that - as if the engine doesn't reach normal operating temp in the winter, absurd!! In addition, real synthetics pour and pump so much easier than mineral oils, I used 20W 50 year round for several years. There was one year when it went below minus 10 F every night for two weeks. And my cars were out side year round at that time.
Only my diesel Cadillac wouldn't start, but it didn't have the right batteries.
With the viscosity index痴 getting close to 200 is there still a need for the multiviscosity rating. Why not forget the VII痴 and simply publish the Viscosity Index instead?
As far as I know Krylon is the largest manufacture of spray can paint in the world, I think it's pretty good stuff myself. Although Rust-Oleum has some new stuff that sprays very nicely with tiny droplets and appears to self level, providing a really nice glossy finish very easily.
Nephthenic oils.
The fact that you can spell it is proof enough to me that you are very knowledgeable of the subject, and it is I that am the student. My only carnal knowledge of the subject is it is used in the manufacture of napalm. Like oil based on esters it's a good solvent, free of wax, and flows at very low temperatures. Sounds like my kind of oil. The nasty characteristic is that it has a high TAN or Total Acid Number which would require the additive package to include a mechanism to neutralize the acid. Eventually those kinds of additives ware out or oxidize severely reducing the appropriate change interval.
But you obviously know a lot more than I, is there an industrial oil application the uses them as lubricants? I know there are a whole slew of companies making industrial lubricants that use synthetic and mineral oil stocks that we never hear about being used for engine lubricants.
By the way, thinking about lubricants usages.
Can you explain why SCAG recommends that owners use multiviscosity 20W 50 engine oil in their hydraulic system. I had always thought that without combustion by-products to worry about, hydraulic fluid could focus on the issues associated with that environment and ignore much of the additives used in engine oils.
Regards
Pete