Home
News
Esprit Models
Owners
Esprit History
For Sale
Other Stuff
Roadtests
Buying & Running
Parts & Specialists
Other Esprit Stuff

Esprit Powder Coating

Powder coating is the technique of applying dry paint to a part. The final cured coating is the same as a 2-pack wet paint. In normal wet painting such as house paints, the solids are in suspension in a liquid carrier, which must evaporate before the solid coating is produced. In powder coating the powdered paint is applied by either of two techniques.

• The item is lowered into a fluidised bed of the powder, which may or may not be electrostatically charged, or
• The powder paint is electrostatically charged and sprayed onto the part.

The part is then placed in an oven and the powder particles melt and coalesce to form a continuous film. This produces a high specification coating which is relatively hard, abrasion resistant and tough. When powder coated items are installed without damage to the powder coating, they should be relatively permanent. The correctly applied coating, although not metallurgically bonded to the metal will not crack, chip or peel as with conventional paint films.

LEW's Powder Coated Suspension

After testing the Sport 350 suspension on LEW's SE it was found to be too hard for the lighter 4-cylinder Esprit. LEW purchased some second-hand GT3 suspension from a LEW user. This suspension was in poor condition due to corrosion of the surface. The finish on the original Lotus suspension isn't particaluarly long lasting. There was no damage to the suspension, just to the finish.

  
This is the Sport 350 Suspension which was taken off LEW's Esprit, this stuff is only 5 years old and is already corroding. The GT3 stuff was much worse.

It was decided to have the suspension cleaned up and have it powder coated for long protection from the elements. To clean the suspension up, it was stand blasted to remove all the old finish and remove any rust. This then gives a good surface for applying a finish.

  

Powder coating was used as it has a good and long lasting finish and will give much better protection against corrosion than paint, especially on something that require give, as in the springs.

Any colour was available for the powder coating, but black, red and yellow where in stock and the best colour choices for suspension. The dampers where coated in black and the springs in bright yellow.

  

The process takes around one to two days to complete. The finish is excellent and compared to the state the suspension was in to start with, it's worth every penny.

The cost was £100 to blast the springs and dampers to remove the previous paint and any corrosion that had built up. Then have the dampers powder coated in black and the springs in yellow.

Beaver Industrial Coatings
Powder Coating Specialists
Unit 28, Singer Way, Woburn Road Industrial Estate, Kempston, Bedford MK42 7AE
Tel: 01234 843614 email: derekjbeaver@aol.com

 

return to top
home email news esprit models road tests buying an esprit running an esprit esprit owners maintenance pictures for sale history Lotus models links