M1102 aluminum trailer paint prep

[Msbaugh]

I've followed a ton of builds here... a lot of y'all have worked with these M1101/2 trailers. I am planning on possibly bedlining the inside and painting the entire thing myself. With the CARC paint I do not want to sand it at home or myself so I'm thinking about getting it sandblasted at a shop. The idea is to use a less harsh media and rather than getting all the CARC paint off just glaze over the whole thing to "rough it up" some for preparation for paint and bedliner. This will get the smaller flaking portions off and I'll use self-etching primer to cover anything that has been stripped of paint.

Everything I've read says not to sandblast aluminum. What do you think about this approach just for prepping... the shop that's willing to do it says they do aluminum stuff all the time and know how to handle it. This is the best alternative I can think of to keep from getting the military paint dust all over the place at home.

Thanks

 

[Space Wrangler]

You can use a 60/80 Garnett/silica mix. DO NOT MESS WITH CARC . It's some nasty stuff . I'd use a sandblast shop to do it .
We have a sandblast booth here at work ( we build dump trucks ) and have done a tone of aluminum blasting ( most of it is 3/16 & 1/4 ) . On already painted stuff we just do a good sweep blast then use a self etching primer like Axalta 250s then a epoxy primers then a single stage top coat .
You could hand prep the surface but wear a respirator and have a good vacuum to suck up all of the dust . I think 3m came out with a air hand sander with a built in vacuum that would work well in most applications

 

[ShamusTX]

When I did mine, I decided to skipped the sandblasting route. I did scuff the paint on the trailer, using scouring pads and sand paper, and then wipe the whole surface down with MEK. I did this twice to make sure I had a clean and scratched bonding surface. I then sprayed monster liner using three coats in the bed and two coats on the external sides of the trailer. So far it has held up very well. A couple of chips missing around the tail gate area, but they were my fault as I gouged through the liner when I hit the trailer with a piece of steel while working on the top.

Before spray on and during cleaning


After all coats applied and cured


close-up

 

[Msbaugh]

Looks great Shamus! I thought about doing all of the sanding and what not in the garage but after reading about the CARC paint have decided to let someone else do it for me. I have the same plans as you except the trailer will be all black raptor liner. I plan on spraying it myself with a rented paint booth I found locally. All I wanted was the inside of the bed done, but my wife doesn't like the tan military look. So she vetoed and requested the whole thing.

How did you control the dusts and all that when sanding it yourself? Or were you not too worried about it?

 

[ShamusTX]

I made a small paint booth in the garage. I was not very aggressive with the sanding, the paint is already very rough. I mainly used the scouring pads supplied with the monster liner kits. This was just enough to scuff the surface. I worked in small areas and wiped it down with MEK. I wore a respirator during the sanding and use of MEK. MEK Fumes are nasty. I vacuumed up all the dust with a shop vac that has a Hepa filter, but kept the respirator on just in case.

Since the paint was in great shape, I decided to minimize my sanding and clean real thoroughly with MEK to remove any containments. MEK was the recommend cleaning method for the liner.

 

[ShamusTX]

Pic of the small paint booth after the second coat was applied.


Plastic all the way around on three sides, it had already started to come done in the pic due to the tight space. In the back left corner is another door that I had a shop fan in with the plastic taped to it. The shop fan was pulling air out of the garage and I kept the garage door open. I used this setup for both the prep work and spraying bed liner. All scoffing was done by hand, no power tools.

I also used the same setup when I was spraying the epoxy primer and bed liner to the custom built top I made.

 

[Msbaugh]

I really like what you did, but I've got to say....

Holy mother of Yetti coolers!!! That could give enough beer to last months!

Looks like I'm going to go the sandblasting route. I found a guy who rents his professional paint booth and I'll spray it then.

 

[Mundo4x4Casa]

How much weight do you think the Monstaliner added to the trailer? It doesn't make a whole lot of difference to your MilSpec, but I was thinking of Monstalinering my entire truck and camper with a sand color, and cannot get a definitive answer on the weight or even how much product it would take.
jefe

 

[Msbaugh]

So I started by having the trailer sandblasted. Didn't want all of the paint off just wanted to rough it up a little for the bedlinen. Ended up pretty good. Not any warpage from the sandblasting and the guys I took it to did a great job. I used self etching primer to get the small spots where bare aluminum was showing. Cleaned and degreased it a couple of times and made sure it was ready to go before spraying.

 

[Msbaugh]

Then it was time to start spraying. I used the U-POL Raptor liner and kept PSI at 50 at the gun. Used 12 full bottles of the stuff and could use 4 more for touch up and to fill in on a couple spots where I went to thin. Overall it looks great, just needs to cure for 7 days before I load anything inside of it. I think it will turn out great.

 

[tlbeach]

Nice!

 

[ShamusTX]

The trailer took 3 gallons to do 2 coats on the outside and 3 coats in the inside. That's lees than 50 lbs of weight

 

[ShamusTX]

Looks great. They did a real good job sand blasting the trailer as well