| Mike,
I've had similar struggles with POR-15 and other treatments. My last go-round, I used several coats of the POR-15 silver/gray primer after a thorough sandblasting. Didn't bother to apply a topcoat to the underside. That has stuck better than anything else thus far (several years on it now), though it is not perfect either. I have also tried to minimize my use of water under the deck, reasoning that getting it wet frequently might be worse than damp grass stuck under there. Don't really know, though.
This subject comes up from time to time on this list and I am not sure there is a foolproof solution. Someone needs to engineer an affordable composite deck... :^)
Steve When I got my E-15 ten or so years ago, I stripped it down to bare metal and painted the entire thing with POR-15 (after treating with Metal Ready, to get it to flash rust for the POR-15 to bond to), then topcoated everywhere except under the mower deck. If anyone wants to see before/after pictures , I put some here: http://pubpages.unh.edu/~msbriggs/elec-trak/Anyway - in the time since then, most of the paint has held up very well. The main issue is the underside of the deck. I always hose off the underside after mowing, but sometimes I may not get all of the grass off on the upper lip (when folded up - the part that is furthest forward when the deck is down). There are many areas where the POR-15 has failed, exposing bare metal which has started to rust again. I'm guessing some of this is from taking a beating with debris (and the occasional rock) while mowing. So, I'm wondering if there might be a better option than POR-15 - or rather something I could top the POR-15 with to give it more resistance to debris, but that would still essentially be like a paint as far as being smooth, something I could wax so that stuff doesn't stick very easily, etc.. I've looked at some undercoatings and bedliners, and many of them seem to not be slippery (for a bedliner you don't want it to be). Has anyone used an undercoating and had good experience as far as it holding up well, and also being easy to clean?
Thanks!
Mike
Michael S. Briggs, PhD UNH Physics Department (603) 862-2828
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