Thread: Trailer WOF upcoming. What to expect?

Originally Posted by No.3

Zinc it spray paint. Cures a world of ills re painted rust repairs... Wire buff the old galv and rust off, chemically treat the steel and remaining corrosion and then hit it with the treatment coat and allow to dry. Then zinc-it with two or three coats, and if VTNZ fail it it will be due to them disliking all galv finishes. Which is not out of the question...

As I've already naively painted it with "fail me instantly" gloss black, would coating over the black with Zinc It help the cause? Or is it still too obvious that I'm potentially hiding something. Think I'm gonna have to weld over some of the worst pitted spots as a starting point. Anyway, I'll take it for the WOF and see what they say. Not VTNZ though obviously. Never take my car there. Trailer no different.

Originally Posted by Pepo1

As I've already naively painted it with "fail me instantly" gloss black, would coating over the black with Zinc It help the cause? Or is it still too obvious that I'm potentially hiding something. Think I'm gonna have to weld over some of the worst pitted spots as a starting point. Anyway, I'll take it for the WOF and see what they say. Not VTNZ though obviously. Never take my car there. Trailer no different.

You need to have a look at how deep the pitting is - anything deeper than 10% over an area is cause to suspect what the structure is like overall, I would consider if you can get to the area easily enough putting a small hole through a pit to check for material thickness before chamfering and spot welding it up. Take photo's of what you've done, the painting as you've noted just shows that there's been work done not what was done and the reason for the work. Zinc it tends to look like a coating repair rather than a bodge job - although if they haven't detailed exactly what the cause for the WOF failure is then that's slack as f. They should have marked the areas of concern with a paint marker and had it rectified spot by spot with photo's at their end to verify the repair.

I've had one trailer failed through corrosion, went and had a look with the guy and he had seen some blown galvanising which was poorly adhered to the structure and had lifted off as a sheet. I knocked the entire piece of galv off and said where's the corrosion? The inspector had to pass me as there wasn't any - just some surface rust on the steel box section. He didn't really know what to say from that point on and gave me the warrant - it wasn't a 'failure' item as such but as I said to him it definitely needed to be noted on the WOF sheet for remediation as the trailer would have rusted out in the next two WOFs if not the next one...