Clear Coat of Polished Metal

Peter, No, what I have is just says Glisen PC on the can. The heat tolerance, which urethanes tend to have anyway, would make it nice to use on the rear panels which I would like to have polished. I've never heard of Rhodium, I will have to check it out. Is it expensive? Bye the way Jet-Hot said to use aluminum polish to clean up finger prints or greasy spots. What does this do when the headers get hot? I would guess it smokes some, but it doesn't leave any kind of color?

This whole translucent color thing has kind of intrigued me. Thanks for the heads up on the powder coat translucents. That behavior would never due. If the famous hardness of POR-15 is there with Glisten II? over their translucents and the heat resistance, that would be ideal.

Besides the rear panels, I am now thinking of copying a feature John Donnelley is using with his GT3 roadster: he is going to cap the tunnel with aluminum. As he said, this would brighten up the cockpit. With my plain black seats, black carpet and black dash (except for the switch plates) it could use some brightening. It would be a fairly simple piece as well-- on John's car anyway as the tunnel is made up of flat surfaces.

With my Bright Atlantic Blue color for the car, translucent blue polishe aluminum should look killer. The only drawback to using color rather than plain polished metal is that you kind of limit the colors you can work with if someone wanted to change colors somewhere down the road.

[Peter D]

Lynn, it might be worthwhile asking your POR guys about the Glisten II - my local rep gave it a big wrap, so I'll try it on the next bits to be done.

The only people who seem to use Rhodium are the specialist platers & jewellers. I seem to remember that some jewellers will plate "white gold" with Rhodium to give it a higher lustre & a harder wearing finish - it looks just like highly polished white gold.

Unfortunately, I am some way away from getting any heat into any JetHot or Glisten parts - at my current rate of progress, I can't see an engine start inside 6 months ! I would be inclined to trust the JetHot guys about the polish - they must do about 80% of their work on headers & I am sure they would not recommend the polish if there was a smoke / fire / stain problem.

Kind Regards,

Peter D. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Peter,

Here is the direct quote from the POR support line: "We are not coming out with a new Glisten. The Glisten PC is good up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.." - Lynn

[Gary Gibbs]

Lynn,
I am curious about your clear results after polishing. All of the clears that I have tried were NOT that hard after cure.

Gary, I have really not done anything with the panel to test hardness at this point. I did press my thumb nail into it as hard as I could stand and it did not make any mark. I started to say it did not leave a mark, but that could imply that there was a mark that went away. It left no mark whatsoever. I guess time will tell on how tough the coating is, but if you want quantitative hardness numbers, you can go to their website where a Glisten FAQ will show these results and others:

The TABER ABRASION TEST was conducted using a Taber Abrasion machine with CS-17 wheels and 1250 grams of pressure. After 500 cycles GLISTEN PC lost 20 mg. of weight while a standard two-component epoxy lost 23 mg.

Hardness was measured by a SWARD Hardness tester seven days after both products were applied to identical panels. The results are as follows: Two-component Epoxy = -55 and GLISTEN PC = -52

[Mark Worthington]

Lynn and Peter, I think you guys have me sold on this stuff! I'm still trying to decide if my panels will be powder coated (i.e., colored), as Bob Lawrence originally intended, or if they'll be shiny aluminum. In either case, there will be some shiny bits and I think I'll try Glisten PC on them. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]