Zolatone or not to Zolatone

Over the holiday weekend I took a couple hours to try to strip one of my panels. I purchased some POR15 stripper and the stuff works great, but there tends to be a bit of residue left over. What I mean by residue is flecks of the old zolatone which is a bitch to get off. This exercise was to see if I could salvage the old aluminum interior to prep it for repainting.

Here are a couple thoughts:
- Strip and sand existing interior panels est. 40+ hours
- estimate cost to strip and sand est. $120 stripper, sand paper, etc.
- estimate to repaint est. $2000-2500 plus travel expenses as it is not local
total cost to repaint interior est. $3000

- New aluminum from air parts inc est. $1500
- strip and polish end caps est. $75
- rivets est. $30
- outsource trim bending. est. 150
Total cost for new aluminum interior est. $1755

I am not taking into account any long term maintenance efforts, but consider the cost and the level of effort to have the interior stripped and repainted with zolatone, I'm inclined to just replace the interior skin with new alclad aluminum. Plus I get that crazy shiny interior that is so popular :)


I spoke to Colin last week. He's done with his part of the project, less the stainless grey water tank. He's pretty busy with other projects, so I am going to have a local company in town fabricate the grey, as well as a bunch of other things for me. The company is Technical Metal Fabircators at techmetailfab.com.

No pictures to post this time round. I've been watching Rob's SOTR these past weeks wishing I had mine back. That SOTR is a pretty sweet rig. If you have not checked his out, you should!

D