Ok, I had a nice long weekend to drive down and work on the truck. First on the docket was to clean up the frame rails and get it ready to paint. The frame wasnt all that rusty, just a bit of surface rust. I used an angle grinder with a braided cup disk to do the flat spots while I put my wife on the air die grinder to hit the tight places.
We spent about 2 hours on the grinding to get the inside and outside of the frame rails as rust free as we could. Best part of the 2 hours, it was from 9am to 11am and was about 110 degrees with no wind or clouds.
I did a lot of looking about the different types of coatings people had used on their frames and decided to do something that I hadnt seen anyone do. As a primer I bought a quart of Rustoleums Rusty Metal Primer. It has a rust arrestor in it and when brushed on is a nice thick coat. We decided to brush it on because I felt like I could get more paint in tighter places doing it that way. Here is what that looked like when we were done.
The topcoat that I decided to use is a Valspar product called Tractor and Implement Paint which I got at TSC. We have used this product on all sorts of things and it always holds up well. I also got some hardener with it. The paint only comes in gallons so I got a gallon of the low gloss black. I mixed the paint with the hardener and then used my HVLP touch up gun to spray the frame. It turned out very nice and has been baking in the 100 degree heat for the past 4 days. Forgot to get a picture of that.