Dear readers,

After giving you some news on the first treatment to make for starting a car shell restoring (car paint removal), we are going to write about a second complementary step: the pickling.

First of all, it’s good to know that pickling is an industrial treatment for rust removal (even the oldest and most difficult to remove). It is made on immersion, so it DOES NOT warp the shell structure at all (or any parts of it) and it does not remove any material.

When doing a pickling treatment ?

After the paint removal (usually) are put to evidence some parts which are completely deteriorated by rust, above all in the door sills/spars, in the bottoms and in the doors (front and back pilaster strips); this condition must be removed, in order to proceed with an accurate restoration, but with the traditional methods like sandblasting/gel/ and converters is not possible to completely remove the oxide from the interstices and inside the car boxes, so we tuned up a machinery which is able to host the entire car shell.

How we do it

The car shell is immersed into a bath containing a pickling liquid. This process involves a treatment which we can define as chemical/mechanical; the pickling product acts chemically by removing all impurities and the ferrous oxides. Moreover, the car shell movement (which happens inside the bath) helps slags to drain outside, also cleaning the car boxes internal area.

Following this first phase, the car shell is immersed into another bath containing an inhibiting product (to block the pickling action), then it is washed with demineralized water then phosphated and dried. We care about specifiyng that the car shell, after pickling is NOT protected with any kind of product, because it should be removed in order to proceed with any operation of restoration/painting.

We can be sure that –as being liquids- the pickling does not modify the metal sheets form/structure/thickness and it DOES not spoil threads or weld joints areas, thus it precisely underlines the “health” of the areas which can be recovered or replaced with restoration.

….And what comes next?

After pickling it is possible to weld, paint and proceed with all operations which can be made on steel as it was “brand new”. After pickling we suggest to treat the car shell with the cataphoresis process (electrostatic painting) which will preserve your car shell….

We will write about it in our next articles.

The most important piece of advice we feel to give you is to rely on experienced professionals caring for any single detail, because your vintage cars are often real antique objects, so their components are generally uniques; the restoration difficulty relies on the responsibility of taking back to life the entire vehicle and consequently any of its little peculiarities.

Rely on experts to make it. The Simet company in Turin is surely the italian company which above all others can offer professionality, warranties and experience in the branch of the car shell preparation.

 

 

 

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