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Powder coat or anodize?

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Gamble97

20+ Year Contributor
2,642
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Jan 3, 2006
small town, Illinois
I'm making some CAS heatshields for an evo. I've seen them anodized but never powder coated. There a reason for that?
 
Depending on the anodized colour, it coluld fade. In that area powder might be better.

After a summer of driving, my anodized black spark plug cover had started to shift towards a brown colour ontop (engine bay temps, underside was alright). Tial WG's (again black), will turn a nasty brown within a couple weeks with their placement on a FP series "bolt-on" turbine housing.

I had my spark plug cover re-anodized by a local, it was supposed to be better for high temps (not sure what, if any difference, think its double coated as well). Its been good so far, but has not had alot of use & think my engine bay temps have gone down abit. To fix the Tial WG issue, I went ceramic coating.

For this specific part, both will probably work. Powder may be the safer option though. Believe black anodizing is the worst for colour change with heat, then red & blue & purple & green are the best (IIRC, its been awhile, that was from Tial)
 
I powder coat EVO8 CAS(cam angle sensor) plates that I make and no issues yet. Is that what your refering too?

Yep thats what I am talking about. Still getting the size to be how I want it. Have 2 right now (1 bent and 1 unbent) just need to test fit it. Then sandblast them and powder coat them. They are SS.
Should I polish them powder coat or just sandblast then powder coat?
 
Whens the last time your vavle cover seen 1000+degrees????? If your vavle cover or head got that hot you would crack your head, or warp it.
The CAS is right by the valve cover. They are saying the valve cover sees the same temps as the CAS. And you would have to have crazy amounts of heat (400*+) for it to mess up. If you are getting heat like that to your VC or CAS you have other issues. Powder would be fine!
 
The CAS is right by the valve cover. They are saying the valve cover sees the same temps as the CAS. And you would have to have crazy amounts of heat (400*+) for it to mess up. If you are getting heat like that to your VC or CAS you have other issues. Powder would be fine!

They do make hi-temp powder though the color choice is limited. As my test vehicle for my CAS plates is stock I didn't run into any heat issues. Guess that's what I will have to switch to.
 
I purchased it from Eastwood there $99 special with two types of media.
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How well does that work compared to a sandblaster? And how long do you tumble the parts for?
 
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Powder coating and anodizing are completely different things.

- Powder coating is just that and additional coating applied to the substrate, typically some polyester of a particular color. Various chemistries exist, being that of thermoplastic versus thermoset depending on application. Much more variation exists in the industrial and aerospace world compared to what most typical car enthusiasts might ever be exposed to (meaning of course there are ASTM and MIL specs to make damn sure it lasts when proper steps are taken).


- Anodizing on the other hand is making use of the substrate itself, or I should say the oxidation layer which forms on the substrate. The process creates pores, it is these pores which are then filled with a dye to desired color. Depending on the quality of the dye and what PROCESS was used to seal the pores you may or may not get fading, it really is a tricky process.

Crazing of anodized finishes is common when exposed to high temps due to CTE mismatch. (I'll stop now, my geek is coming out from years in a materials lab).







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