Current Prices for professional services

[buildityourself]

To start this off what have people paid to have 8 x suspension wishbones powder coated?

[skyquake]

Can't help there, I'm afraid, but dipping in Plastidip is pretty straight forward enough. All you'd need is a couple of cans, plastidip primer and a tray and you could coat some wishbones easily enough.

Personally however, I'm planning on spraying my bones in a PU truckbed liner like the U-Pol raptor system. It's as tough as coatings come, so should keep exposed metal components in good condition for as long as possible.

[casesensitive]

Having plastidipped my bonnet, and quickly stripped it off, I can't recommend you do anything to wishbones other than powdercoat them.

Its just too flimsy, imagine wrapping them in a few layers of clingfilm.

Powdercoat is stronger than paint by all accounts, I wouldn't rely on only paint on something that will take the impact of all those stone chips.

I paid an-over-the-odds €730 to powder coat the whole chassis, wishbones etc here in Dublin. I understand £400-600 is more normal.
A bike frame, which is comparable surface area would be €80-120 to Powdercoat.

[skyquake]

Case is perfectly entitled to his opinion, and I'm sure it's a valid one, but in my professional experience, I'm afraid I'd disagree almost entirely! (Sorry case!)

Firstly, plastidip for this application shouldn't be thin and flimsy. The stuff used for vehicle 'dipping' is intentionally so, deliberately such that you can remove it once you're bored of it. It's applied onto shiny paint with no preparation. For suspension components, they should be abraded (preferably shot blasted) and primed using plastidip primer. It should then be applied fairly thick and built up in layers; I'd be looking at a minimum of 0.5-1mm film thickness. This should give you a tough rubbery (but still flexible) coating. Better still, if it does get damaged, it can be repaired readily with extra plastidip (it's soluble in the solvent, and actually re-forms a continuous coat, rather than simply filling in a patch).

Powdercoat will certainly give you a tougher coating, and will be much more chip resistant than normal paint. However, it suffers from crack propagation once damaged. Crucially, this means on something like a suspension component, while the coating is generally fairly resistant, once you do get a chip in it, the damaged area will 'suck' moisture in between the coating and the metal. Once it's in, it then bleeds further and further underneath the coating and allows rust formation. I've seen components with a visually pretty reasonable looking powdercoat, which have rusted to hell underneath. Still, stick a couple of coats of stone chip paint on top of powdercoated components and they'll be pretty good for decades..

From experience (my field is special purpose military vehicles), I don't believe you can beat PU coatings for applications like this. The U-Pol Raptor system I've mentioned is specially designed to take a real pummeling on pick up truck beds, and I've found it to be extremely hard wearing. They're even starting to use similar PU systems as spall liners for armoured vehicles now, they're that good!

Anyway, I feel I've strayed somewhat from the OP's question! Sorry!

[kiwicanfly]

I looked at both powder and paint for my Rocket.

I read about the cracking and leaching issues that can happen with powder and decided to go with paint to avoid this and for easier touch up.

Pretty much as soon as I put sticky tyres on my rear wishbone finish was destroyed and I paid A LOT, and I mean A LOT, for the paint job.

I then put the car into the kitty litter at a track and munted the chassis bottom tube finish as well.

I had my floor done in truck bed liner and, where not physically scraped off underneath, is still in great shape.

If I was doing it again and, considering the abuse I have inflicted on it, I would almost definately go with powder coat on the chassis but accept it would need to be done again every two or three years. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper as well.

However I might just choose to use the bed liner on wishbones and wing stays.