Best Paints to Coat Your Vehicle Under Carriage
When maintaining or restoring the underside of your vehicle you may be confused on which coatings will work best for your particular situation. We often get calls and emails asking which products to use and how to stack them. This answer tends to be different for each situation and there isn’t a blanket answer we can give. What we can do is give you our top 5 under car coatings and in which situation they work best. Read Below to learn more.
- Undercoating- Rubberized Undercoating is one of our most popular under car coatings (truck under coatings can be found here) we sell and it works for anything from protecting your daily driver to a full blown restoration project. One thing to keep in mind is that undercoating is meant to be a top coat but isn’t necessarily the best to apply over rust or bare metal. If you want to a product that can stop rust and give the protection from road debris like rubberized undercoating we normally suggest our Rubberized Rust Encapsulator.
- Rust Treatment- Most under carriages will have some sort of rust. If you see compromised factory floor coatings or a little bit of rust on the underside of your vehicle you’re just looking at the tip of the iceberg. If you need to stop the rust and protect it from coming back you need to clean the floors and undercarriage off in those areas until you get to clean metal. Start by sealing those areas up with Rust Encapsulator. Rust Encapsulator can be applied over clean and rusty metal and will seal out moisture from future rust forming. If you’re applying it to the underside of your car we suggest top coating it to avoid compromising the coating from road debris.
- Chassis Paint- While putting a rubberized undercoating on the underside of your vehicle may work well for protecting the floors, wheel wells, etc. it isn’t the best for a chassis; especially one that is exposed. Chassis Black is the best coating we offer if you want something that’s durable and will hold up to road debris; but also will look smooth and clean like the exterior of your vehicle. The level of durability depends on the Chassis Black that you choose. We suggest our 2K Ceramic Chassis Black if you want a product that will last a lifetime.
- Under Carriage Primer- If you’ve replaced the floors or done rust repair under your vehicle you may have cleaned off all of the rust and don’t need a rust encapsulator to seal the rust up. If that’s the case you just simply need to seal up the bare metal and your repairs. We generally suggest to prime or seal the metal up before you apply a seam sealer or any other coating. The primer you catch will depend on what coating you put over the primer. Self Etching Primer has great adhesion and dries quickly but doesn’t play well with all top coatings. Make sure you check your top coating for compatibility. If you have any questions you can use an Epoxy Primer to seal up the metal. This won’t dry as quick and is normally a 2K coating; but it’s our safest option. Either way you need to seal up ALL bare metal or it will become rusty metal quickly!
- Seam Sealer– A common place for rust to form on the underside of a vehicle is where panels are seam sealed from the factory. Over time the seam sealer can fail and begin to peel and rust forms under it. If you can see a bead of seam sealer hanging or peeling off you have a problem and should really remove it all and seal the area up before reapplying. Also if you’ve done repairs and replaced panels you should use seam sealer to cover the lapped or butted seams. Refer to #4 above to see which primer works for you or use Rust Encapsulator if there’s some evidence of rust still there. Seam sealer should be applied in a thin bead with a caulk gun or with a brush and pushed into the seam to assure it’s fully covering the seam. You can use a little bit of PRE on your finger (wearing a rubber glove of course!) and run it over the seam sealer bead to get a smooth finish.
To see all of our under car coatings visit our site HERE.