How-To Paint The Caddy Chassis

Preparing and painting a chassis at home

- Larry O'toole

Back in issue 370 of ASR we detailed the stripping, sandblasting and repair of the chassis from under my son, Shane’s ’55 Cadillac Coupe De Ville. It’s a huge chassis so it isn’t easy to handle without lifting gear and often a couple of assistants, despite being stripped right down to the bare basic frame. Nevertheless the necessary repairs were completed and the chassis set aside for painting before the gradual re-assembly work can be undertaken. Unfortunately the only practical place for the chassis to be stored in the meantime is on my Tuff Lift four post hoist, so whenever I need to use the hoist, the chassis has to be manhandled out of the shed while the work takes place.

Once the chassis had been sandblasted, I sprayed it all over with grey U-Pol weld-through primer to protect it from the elements. I found the primer very easy to work with and it did a relatively good job of protecting the bare metal – until I had to leave the chassis outside for several days while the hoist was in use – and it rained quite a lot during that period. That soon revealed the areas where I didn’t quite put enough primer on the rails and in a matter of days the whole thing started to look a bit shabby again with a layer of surface rust appearing extensively over the chassis.