Alodine/Bonderite Treatment

[Fly-Fla]

I am trying to decide whether to treat my kit with alodine (Bonderite as it’s called now) instead of doing a two part epoxy like Akzo. I live in coastal Florida and feel like it’s worth doing one or the other to protect the plane. I like the fact alodine doesn’t add weight whereas from my research it seems a full interior prime could add ten or fifteen pounds or more to the airframe with mostly an aft CG bias. So is priming enough better than alodine alone to justify the weight?

[PhilipRueker]

I believe the Factory now actually default alodines some of the parts as I've seen on some pictures from newer kits, so you might not even have to do it yourself anymore.

Can #slingsupport confirm that's the case now?

[Fly-Fla]

A side question to doing alodine. Can you alodine the inside of the fuel tanks? I was worried about the tank sealant bonding well with it. I read alodine is great prep for paint/primer but I’m not sure if that translates to tank sealant.

[ibgarrett]

Ah - the good ol' Alodine discussion... This was on my list to also ask about (and maybe should be in a different thread), but in watching a lot of the alodining videos it seems pretty straight forward of 3 different baths to dip the material into. I was thinking I would like to do all the small parts in the Alodine and then treat the joining surface with the Self-etching primer on the non-alodine treated joints.

Effectively we would have one component treated with alodine and the other component with the self-etching primer meeting up.

I know dissimilar metals/materials sometime can be an issue, but would this be an issue doing it this way? I just don't want to do the alodining on the big parts.

Thanks - Brian

[ncs]

They did show alodining in the recent EAA webinar. If I remember correctly Mike mentioned that they weren't (or stopped) and they saw some corrosion that they don't see with alodined parts.

For me, I've decided to go with a permanganate conversion coating produced by Sanchem. It's not as effective, but it doesn't have the toxicity issues so I'll take that as a middle ground. I figure the worst-case scenario is that I have to apply Corrosion-X or something similar down the line. While the rattle-can primers do seem to work in lab testing as far as corrosion prevention, what I've read about their physical robustness hasn't convinced me of their long-term effectiveness. Has anyone seen any testing of how well they hold up when used between mating surfaces?

[Sling Technical Official]

I believe the Factory now actually default alodines some of the parts as I've seen on some pictures from newer kits, so you might not even have to do it yourself anymore.

Can #slingsupport confirm that's the case now?

It is standard procedure at the factory to alodine aluminum parts for RTF (Ready to Fly) aircraft.

[ibgarrett]

Oh - I so wish mine was a RTF... I bought the Ikea version of the plane... "some (or in my case all) assembly required"