Fan Shroud(housing) - original finish?(gold) (Type 4)

[rustbus]

[rustbus]

[nathansnathan]

My dad who is a retired tranny man would coat the cases that he'd rebuilt with aluminum spraypaint. With the way aluminum reflects I always thought is was about as bad as white for how dirt shows up.

[junkyardave]

hey just a thought you could pollish it by hand .
first have it soda blasted then sand it down with 150 grit
then keep going to higher grits and to reach tight spaces use a dremel
the only reason i know of this is my brother in law has did this in the past
for manifolds and transmisions .this sounds like a lot of work
to me.

[Westfabulous]

[Rob R]

I bead blasted my fan shroud and painted it with Glasurit clear.

[rustbus]

awesome, thanks Rob for the pictures. that looks good!
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May of '72 Deluxe. 2.0L L-Jet CS & 091 trans conversion
my Bus thread

[74westy]

I'm trying to get the same OG look for the fan housing. I started with soda blasting to clean up and remove any corrision. This acheived mixed results. Now I am in the process of cleaning further with Tergo paint remover and metal conditioner. This contains phosphoric acid which I read was good for cleaning alumiium. This is working ok and gives a raw metal finish. I'm just brushing on, leaving for a few minutes and lightly scrubbing with a tooh brush.

The finish is a bit patchy but has the "gold" hue in some plaes. This "gold" hue is similar to the inside areas of the housing which have been sealed up from new when the two halves were bolted together at the factory.
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1974 Westfalia 1800 AW Stock, Twin 34PDSIT
1970 Type 3 Fastback 1600TL Automatic

[SGKent]

I want to add to this old thread. Been doing some research on magnesium coatings for the 091 I am rebuilding. One example is Dow1 which is here.

http://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=587241

What I have discovered is that the processes made by Dow are no longer available although the formulas are so some folks still do them Dow 1 and Dow 17 were commonly used on mag alloys. I've learned that the processes were originally designed to be sacrificial - they protect the part while it is passing thru the manufacturing process and while it is on the shelf. Once on a car some of the processes can be gone in as little as 24 hours in say a place where slush with road salt gets on them. In open air they go away and change color as they go away. The gold turns to light gold in awhile, then a silverish, then dark gray - hence why we see so many colors. The inside of my trans for example is gold where the oil protected it from oxygen and gray outside where water and oxygen got to it. Ducatti uses a paint process to control their mag from oxidizing but the cost of the paint from colorrite is like $50 a can. ColorRite Ducati magnesium gold paint is the color.

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“Most people don’t know what they’re doing, and a lot of them are really good at it.” - George Carlin

[notchboy]

What happened to Westfabulous? I thought he was well into cracking it?

So Im sure Mr Ruiz found an aircraft coater. Has you send him your stuff as a middleman then sends it back to you? Ive never run down the process here - and with all the Boeing engineers into ACVWs they have the answer on where and how for sure.

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[busdaddy]

The formula for Magnesium pickle solution was in many of the manuals I trained on for aircraft maintenance, it's not a proprietary Dow thing, they just packaged it already made. With the right connections in the chemical industry all the ingredients are still available, the issue is many are restricted or require some elaborate handling and disposal procedures, that's why no shops will do it anymore. Another issue was modern helicopters don't use magnesium for transmission cases, etc. like the old school ones did, many of the shops we contacted responded with a "chrome pickle?, what's that?", one said they would try some modern equivalents but after a few months the only thing they had done was lost a sample shroud.

Westfab and I are still on this, he's just taking a little break from the bus project to deal with other more important things, when we get back on it you'll read about it here.
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[notchboy]

Makes sense. Thanks Busdaddy
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[Wildthings]

T127 industrial engine, zero hours, no coating on fan shroud. Note that since this picture was taken the fan shroud has become a corroded mess having been stored in a covered but unheated area.

[raygreenwood]

[skills@eurocarsplus]

here's my take....

stop over thinking this. glass bead the stuff, prep, tint your clear with gold, different ratios for different coats to give that crappy uneven finish.

someone send me a beaded shroud and I will work my magic...free. you pay for shipping and materials
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[richparker]

[SGKent]

[old DKP driver]

The paint is UGLY and won't last and looks like a cross between the
SF49ers and Notre-Dame helmet colors.


Yuck!
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V.W.owner since 1967

[SGKent]

[old DKP driver]

That's why I have mine powder coated BLACK .......
& shiny and easy to wipe off the dust.

There were only a couple of years that VW actually used the gold colored
finish and most were 74 models including those in the 412 type-4

It's obvious it was an experiment that may have cost more $$ than it was worth.

Yeah, I was there back then and they looked Purty but, $$$$ talks and
that's not what the vw was interested in Cost reduction before the H2O MODELS with the famous Dasher. and it had No gold anywhere.....

anodizing a fan housing is/was. not a selling point just an experiment.
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V.W.owner since 1967