Powdercoating coolant tank?

I was told the comercial powder coat ovens where hot enough to melt some types of solder by both my radiator guy and my powder coater. But, there there are higher temp solder if you redo your overflow tank using that - which my radiator guy does not recommend for unknown reason. If you have try and success let us know.
 
How important is it to powdercoat that tank? Is there a color match issue. Can you use gloss black - which is likely to match any other gloss black around the engine. Or how about POR-15? I used it on A-Arms & it looks good, maybe not concours quality, but then neither am I. And you really can do it yerownself [hey, if I can, anyone can]. Goes on easy, flows well & is v tough. Don't really have any good pics that show finish & gloss, but I'll attach some anyway. Probably not as good as quality powder, but depends partly on prep work on the metal first, of course. These A-Arms were not pristine to begin with & I could not spend enough time to get a perfectly smooth surface.

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Just some history on how bulk parts were painted in the British motor industry.... give some thought to the volume and you will understand that painting by either spray or manual application would have been hugely impractical. Better than 90% of non-body parts, things like heater boxes, suspension parts, brackets were painted by the dip/film method. This involves a thin layer of paint floating on water in a HUGE vat. Depending on how fast, or slow, the parts were dipped determined how much paint was deposited on the parts. When stripping these parts with a bead blaster you can often see the tracks of the displaced water.

The paint was very poor quality gloss black that rapidly lost its gloss. I have found exceptions to this method. They are almost always products that were brought in from specialist manufacturers. One of these items is steering boxes and steering columns which have a much higher quality of paint, both in gloss hold out and in film thickness. Radiators (and expansion tanks) were usually finished in satin or semi-gloss paint, not gloss paint and were not painted by using the "dip method". Rear axles would have been painted by the manufacturer, in the case of the Tiger, Salisbury, but the quality of the paint was poor. Electrical parts supplied by Lucas were usually semi or satin black and you can spot runs, sags and drips that indicate a rushed application...
 
Austin Healer said:
. Rear axles would have been painted by the manufacturer, in the case of the Tiger, Salisbury, but the quality of the paint was poor. Electrical parts supplied by Lucas were usually semi or satin black and you can spot runs, sags and drips that indicate a rushed application...
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The rear axles poor quality paint selection led to one of the common Tiger detail misconceptions and errors in restoration.

The red coating applied to the diff housing is often seen as the original black paint flakes off as it didn't cure/bind to the later below ..hence so many tigers restored with the red centre section
 
michael-king said:
The rear axles poor quality paint selection led to one of the common Tiger detail misconceptions and errors in restoration.

The red coating applied to the diff housing is often seen as the original black paint flakes off as it didn't cure/bind to the later below ..hence so many tigers restored with the red centre section
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absolutely correct... The red Glyptal coating does not hold paint well!
 
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