The simplest way to describe how metal moves or reacts when you shrink or stretch it is to imagine pizza dough. When you stretch the dough out to make a larger pie you’ll see it gets larger AND thinner as you stretch it out. If you watch the process they start with a small, thick, round piece of dough that they kneed out until the dough is the desired thickness and put the excess material on the edges for the “crust” The same if they wanted to make the pie smaller, you’d need to gather the dough together creating bunches and smooth it all together until it was the desired shape. Metal reacts almost EXACTLY the same.
Tag: eastwoodco
Turbo Refinish with Powder Coating
Whether you’re adding a turbo to your car or just refinishing the one you already have the best and really only option is powder coating. Eastwood has everything you need to completely restore your turbo in an extremely durable corrosion-free finish that other coatings simply can’t match.
What is “Hot Flocking” and When do I do it?
This helps with adhesion, but can be VERY tricky if you aren’t careful. Start by cleaning your parts as good as possible, including any paint, grease or oil. I then like to run the part through the heat and cool cycle once heating the part past the curing temperature of your powder (check your powder bottle for the temperature). I then do one last wipe down with Acetone and then put it back in the oven and heat it to the curing temperature until the ENTIRE part is reading the cure temperature. Using an IR thermometer is key here.
5 Trail Items You Need on Your Truck
When you’re out on the trail your cell phone isn’t going to save you. There’s some key items you’ll need to get your rig going when broken down or stuck on the trail. We decided to put together a short list of our favorite Eastwood products that are trail must-haves. These aren’t the only items you need, but will definitely be key items for off-road vehicle survival!
How to fabricate and install Heavy Duty Threaded Inserts
Recently when channeling my Ford Model A I wanted to use Grade 8 fasteners for all of the body mounts instead of just tapping threads into the frame or inserting rivnuts that could fail over time. First of all the 1/4″ wall of the tubing wasn’t really thick enough to […]
Protect the Underside of your Off-Road Vehicle- The Coatings you need.
Keeping the underside of your car protected is more important than you may think; even on your daily driver. Most “rotted out” vehicles you see started rusting in the underbelly of the car or truck. These are the areas that weren’t protected properly from the factory or had a poor coating that broke down from year-round driving. On 4×4 and Off-Road vehicles the risk of road salt isn’t as bad as the damage caused by driving over “stuff” (that’s the fun of it right?). Your factory coatings aren’t going to hold up to the rock chips, brush, etc dragging under your vehicle. The truth is, no coating can withstand some of the extreme conditions seen when rock crawling or off-roading. Think about it, if it damages the metal, NO coating is going to be able to withstand that sort of impact. But there are some coatings, or combinations of coatings that can hold up better than others. I put together a list of a few of my favorites below.
How Much Paint Do You Need to Paint a Car?
There is no way to know exactly how much paint you need to paint every car, but there are basic guidelines. Of course the bigger the car, truck or van is the more paint you will need, and if you are spraying a basecoat/clearcoat you will need both components. One good way to make a more accurate estimate…
How to Make A Free Tuck Shrinking Fork
You may not realize it, but many of our Eastwood tools are dreamt up and prototyped the same way you build things at home. We have a problem or see a need for a tool to help do a job right and we build something ourselves. I recently needed to shrink the edge of a panel that was on a vehicle and I couldn’t get a shrinker stretcher on it to shrink. An alternative method is to “Tuck-Shrink” the area and use a hammer and dolly to shrink the metal into itself. I decided to make my own homemade tuck shrink tool from some old tools for free I had laying around and show you the process.
Hands on Cars Episode 1- How to Inspect and Evaluate a Project Car
The first episode of Hand on Cars, from Eastwood and Kevin Tetz, body work expert, paint wizard and all around car guy. In the first episode Kevin takes you through the process of inspecting a prospective project car before buying it. The car in question? One of the nearly quarter million 1978 Camaros Chevy built, but this one is a Z28 which makes it one of only about 50,000.