Occasionally our technical team receives enquiries from customers looking for horsebox paint for trailers or livestock vehicles. With vehicles such as horseboxes that can be susceptible to heavy wear and tear, a paint coating needs to be durable to last heavy wear.
To ensure you do not devalue your horsebox or horse trailer, it is important you sufficiently prepare prior to redecoration. Promain provide quality suitable paints that you can apply easily without an expensive trip to a sprayer.
Promain’s Suggested Horsebox Paint: Rust-Oleum Noxyde
Rust-Oleum Noxyde is a heavy duty, direct to metal, rust preventative paint. Being highly resistant to weathering, mechanical and chemical attack, this paint can withstand cleaning agents required when livestock is involved. Noxyde is also impact resistant. Due to the nature of the construction of box type vehicles, they bend and flex in heat and wind as well as pot holes in the road. Many of these vehicles are used on tracks getting to horse fields and farms etc. These are often unmade roads leading to a bumpy ride. Rust-Oleum Noxyde is incredibly flexible with up to 200% elasticity which is ideal for the metalwork movements. This paint forms a rubbery anti-rust membrane, which is impermeable to water, meaning prevention of rust corrosion. All of these benefits make Noxyde ideal for horsebox paint.
Preparation of Metalwork
Preparation is key to having a paint last on your vehicle. To do a good job it is important to allow sufficient time and effort to get a quality finish. The metalwork on horseboxes tend to have aluminium construction. Aluminium oxidises extremely quickly. We advise clients to abrade no more than 1m2 at a time before applying the diluted coat of Noxyde.
Remove all grease, oils or other contaminants using alkaline or high pressure steam cleaning with appropriate detergents. Prepare the metalwork via sandblasting to Sa2 or high pressure water jetting. Water jet at a minimum of 600 bars. You can hire equipment from local tool companies. We would suggest searching online for your local suppliers. Ensure to always follow data sheets regardless of your expertise. If it sounds like a lot of work or more hassle, get a specialist to do this part for you to save on potential stress. Failure of proper preparation can lead to a potentially expensive mistake. If you would like further information please contact our technical department.
Applying Rust-Oleum Noxyde on Vehicles
After sufficient preparation, an initial coat of Rust-Oleum Noxyde thinned down with 25% water should be applied to the area using a brush, roller or airless spray. You can rent airless sprayers from local tool suppliers alongside the cleaning machinery.
Alternatively, to aid adhesion an initial primer of Rust-Oleum Pegalink can be used. Rust-Oleum Mathys Pegalink not only has the excellent adhesion properties required for a paint to fix to a smooth surface, but also is highly UV resistant with impressive weather protection properties.
After the initial diluted priming coat is recoatable, apply two further coats undiluted. For optimum rust preventative protection apply at a rate of 800 grams per m2. This would be a dry film thickness of 350μm.
For the horsebox paint project shown, the client chose two complimentary colours of Noxyde. These were Gravel Gray and Moss Green.
For further information on industrial vehicle and machinery paint, see our extensive list of Selemix products on our website. To find out which paint is best for you, contact our technical team on 01462 421333. Alternatively email us via our contact page.
