anybody done this?

mine looks terrible and im thinking about maybe sanding all the rust off of it and painting it a nice shiny black

 

sounds like a plan...if you have an angle grinder, though, i would suggest getting a wire cup for it to take off the rust and old paint. will work much faster than sanding.

if you don't have an angle grinder, those paint stripping wheels you use with an electric drill work OK...not nearly as well as a an angle grinder with a wire cup, though.

(you can get a cheap angle grinder for prolly $30...and it will make stripping all the paint and rust off your skid plate into about a 10 minute job.)

 

I cleaned mine then scraped them down with a wire brush and sanded over it, then put 3 coats of primer and 3 of paint. I figure they will get bashed and scraped well before the minor rust under the paint causes a problem. I went with a semi-flat and it looked really nice, not to shiny/not to flat, a gloss would look goofy IMO. It worked really well, they came out nice.

The reason I painted them was because they were looking pretty lousy and then I crumpled one side of it. I finished it and it was dark so I didn't get any pictures, then the next day it rained in the afternoon so when I finally got a couple shots they were a little dirty, but you get the idea.



In this picture you can see the crumpled section that is now mostly flattened out again, it was the best I could manage, it came out pretty good considering how it looked.



*edit- Pics are better size now

 

I used some paint stripper from home depot and got in all the tight spots with a wire cup on a cordless drill...only thing I had at the time. I was working in powder coating at the time so I just shot it a blue closest to the color of the runner. Its been well over a year now...and alot of scrapes...but no peeling or rusting.

 

Took mine off awhile ago. It wouldn't fit with a lightbar that I got free from a friend. So, after letting it sit on my porch for awhile...I got ambitious and decided to make it fit. Took my angle grinder to it...cut it to width and then wire wheeled it and painted it with POR-15. Looks better than it did!

 

Beat me to it. I'm a firm believe in POR-15 for undercarraige paint.

 

I did that with mine, just using Rustoleum ... it lasted decently, but when I do it again eventually I'd want something more like POR-15.

It's an easy job though, and something that you can always do over again when necessary.

 

it was the first thing i did to my truck when i got it... i just used Rustolum (sp?) flat spraypaint. its still holding up after ~1 1/2 years. i dont feel like resizing the pics so heres a couple links:
clicky1
clicky2

 

Yeah I bet that would be a great job for POR 15.

 

paint doesnt last too long, especially with any abuse.....i used some of that rubberized undercoating. i think i may sand it down again and try something a little tougher next time

 

Is that you or your buddy wearing all those "friendship bracelets", dude, that went out back in the 80's.

 

that is my brorher.... i guess they made a short come back a while ago (that pic is a year old) and has already gone out again.

 

So did the mullet, doesn't mean you should get one!

 

As you can see in this pic, I painted mine to match the truck. It was all dirty and oily, so I used a wire wheel to clean it up. A few weeks later, I saw another Yota in town who must have liked my idea and decided to paint his