Painting aluminum floor with Kiwi Grip

[Sir Reel]

My 8' dinghy has an aluminum hull. The inside is painted non skid but was peeling off like crazy.
I had heard about Kiwi Grip and wanted to try it. Thanks to Sculpin and Albernifisher who told me the correct way to prepare the Aluminum surface.
Has turned out really nice and was pretty easy to do.
Here is the process.

Washed the entire insides with sunlight soap and scrub brush. Twice.
Let dry then taped off the area I wanted to paint. Higher up the insides the paint was still ok.
Scraped off any large flakes with a putty knife
Sanded the entire area inside the tape with 120 grit on random orbital sander. Making sure any bare areas were feathered into the paint. I found that when a flake was removed the corrosion went far past that edge.
Then used wax and grease remover over the entire area. Twice
Applied a 2 part Grey Epoxy primer over the entire area.
Then applied the Kiwi Grip while the epoxy was still tacky( about 2 hours) Kiwi Grip will tie-coat to epoxy primers.
I applied the Kiwi grip with a large putty knife (its thick) and then used the special roller to get the non-skid texture I wanted.
Remove all the tape as soon as I finished rolling out.
Turned out really nice and seems super hard and durable. Not too aggressive a non skid either. You can adjust by how you roll it out.
Will see how it stands up over time.

Picture 3 is the Epoxy and 4 and 5 are the Kiwi Grip finished.

Epoxy Primer and grease remover I got a Lordco. Albernifisher recommended C.R.E. 321 epoxy but my Lordco did not stock and PPG is very similar.
Kiwi Grip I got at Industrial Plastics

 

[Fishin'Zinn]

Can't go wrong with PPG stuff really... Pretty much the best auto paint IMO

Good attention to prep, should definitely hold up. It's holding up well on the boat I use.

 

[Tightlines22]

Nice work! Your end result looks great.

 

[Oly1]

Great looking job Sir Reel. Was the Kiwi Grip reasonable for price. Looks like it did a bang up job.

 

[Sir Reel]

Kiwi Grip was about $60 for a litre. Don't think I used half of it for this Job. The degreaser and epoxy was about $100 and again used less than half.
Like I said the result was very good but will have to see how it stands up over time

 

[fishyboy99]

Hi Sir Reel,

I was thinking of doing the same thing to the floors of my boats. Do have a question though, did your spray the 2 part epoxy on the your floor, or did you roll it on? Any other issues with the prep, seems pretty straight forward from what you told us? Thanks and hope my boats turn out as nice

Regards,

Fishyboy

 

[Sir Reel]

Hi Flyboy,
You are supposed to spray the epoxy on and use a reducer. However this was such a small job that I did not use reducer and used just a foam brush to apply.
I wasn't too worried about the final look as it was going to be non skid anyway. It came out pretty smooth though.

Just make sure you do really good prep. That's the key.
Sanded right down and really well cleaned with the wax and grease remover.

FYI the grey is a very light grey and was perfect colour for my application. You could also get the epoxy in various colours so choose grey in case of scratches.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Be happy to help!
Dave

http://www.pyiinc.com/images/pdf/KiwiGrip/KiwiGrip Application Instructions.pdf

 

[fshnfnatic]

I put Kiwigrip on the floor of my boat about 3 years ago and it still looks great.The only thing I find with it is that grime
from your shoes/boots is really hard to scrub off the floor because of the texture of it so I use a power washer to get
the tougher grime off.Other than that,it's a great product.