Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

Just built a new house and want to seal the floor of the garage.

so many different products out there i would like to know whats best? i spill oil water etc when working on cars.

i seen in this section many photos of cars sitting on nice clean garage floors

If you can afford to, do a polyurethane or epoxy type floor seal. This is nothing like hardware store floor sealer.

These surfaces are used in industrial high traffic areas, the food factories I've worked in renew them every 5 years or so; as a home garage floor it would be next to indestructible.

You can steam clean, no damage, use jacks etc, no problem. They can be textured or a gloss finish; the gloss is like glass.

get onto http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/ it's basically SAU but for garages / workshops & is quite frankly awesome. Has a whole section on Flooring.

Then recommend getting into the 'garage gallery' section which is basically build threads. Current favourites are The Concrete Underground, 44 Bikes Frame Shop & Mark's Monster Garage but seriously heaps of awesome builds.

Prepare to lose hours / days / weeks...

The epoxy flooring is tough, but certainly not indestructible. I have 2 garage floors done in this stuff (total about 240m2) and if you drop sharp steel objects on it hard enough it will damage the coating. I just finished fabricating a heap of shelving and work benches and dragging 100kg shelf units across the floor (with sharp edges on the end of the feet) does scratch / damage the surface. If you drop something heavy onto the concrete, it'll crumble the concrete underneath and the poly coating will come off.

Still, this stuff is infinitely stronger than paint, so will stand up to general wear and tear (dragging jacks across the floor, pressure washing, oil spills etc.)

Also remember some of it is very slippery when wet.

I used paving/concrete paint from bunnings, and it is starting to wear after only 12 months of weekend use. So depending on price of the epoxy stuff I would go that instead. It still looks good overall and seals oil/water properly but I don't think its going to last as long as I'd like.

Most workshops that use paint redo it every year.

Also it's important to acid etch the floor first or it will flake off early.

Shit, that garage forum will have me stuck for hours!

it seems poly or epoxy is the way to go. bout 499 for 20L which should do my floor and my old mans also tho his will need a fair bit of cleaning or diamond cutting back since its over 10 years old and is fairly worn. both about 6x6m

Shit, that garage forum will have me stuck for hours!

it seems poly or epoxy is the way to go. bout 499 for 20L which should do my floor and my old mans also tho his will need a fair bit of cleaning or diamond cutting back since its over 10 years old and is fairly worn. both about 6x6m

You want a rough surface for the paint to stick to. It mechanically adheres to the concrete it doesnt react with it. So clean it, degrease it and etch it with either the proper etching stuff or if you know what you are doing and are careful (fkn careful) acid.

  • 1 month later...

so i've done the clean, and sand of the garage floor. @$#%^^$# asian painters and plasterers that did my house are a bunch of messy %@$$^#$%&$%^$%

Did the etch on wednesday afternoon and have now got the first layer of epoxy down its starting to look pretty good. except for the small cracks everywhere.

will grab a photo today after the second coat. i ended up buying the epoxy from csw coatings 10L kit will do two pretty thick coats on my 6x6 m2 floor.

How much was the 10L? I've got a 6X7 garage and 14X8 shed to do, both new concrete.

Would you still need to etch clean a brand new floor? Obviously clean off the concrete dust and give it a good wash but would it need an etch?

Amerlock 400 is the go

My garage is done in this. After looking at dads shed, about 15 years its had the stuff on it and we have dragged, dropped, got thiners, oil etc on it and the only bit that has been damaged is missing a chunk of concrete. The stuff is great

We got it locally at an industrial paint etc supplier, can't remember how much but about 10L did the garage floor, the small shed slab and a little bit of concrete where my small clothes line is. Will try and get a photo in a bit

How much was the 10L? I've got a 6X7 garage and 14X8 shed to do, both new concrete.

Would you still need to etch clean a brand new floor? Obviously clean off the concrete dust and give it a good wash but would it need an etch?

bout 300 i think i spent. acid, masks, paint rollers and metal paint pole + other shit

i had to sand my floor in many places, and get the high pressure hose on it , and yep etch is a must unless you grind.

i mixed half the 10l bucket and did two coats for 6x6 and had enough left over to do a fair bit more so a 20L would get you done with two coats.

post-31456-0-28551300-1385110007_thumb.jpg

Would anything like this be OK? Or not worth the bother? Not cheap by any means.
I just need to paint half the concrete floor of a double garage.

http://www.bunnings.com.au/berger-jet-dry-10l-heavy-duty-evening-stone-paving-paint_p1410009

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • The other problem was one of those "oh shit we are going to die moments". Basically the high spec Q50s have a full electric steering rack, and the povo ones had a regular hydraulic rack with an electric pump.  So couple of laps into session 5 as I came into turn 2 (big run off now, happily), the dash turned into a christmas tree and the steering became super heavy and I went well off. I assumed it was a tyre failure so limped to the pits, but everything was OK. But....the master warning light was still on so I checked the DTCs and saw – C13E6 “Heat Protection”. Yes, that bloody steering rack computer sitting where the oil cooler should be has its own sensors and error logic, and decided I was using the steering wheel too much. I really appreciated the helpful information in the manual (my bold) POSSIBLE CAUSE • Continuing the overloading steering (Sports driving in the circuit etc,) “DATA MONITOR” >> “C/M TEMPERATURE”. The rise of steering force motor internal temperature caused the protection function to operate. This is not a system malfunction. INSPECTION END So, basically the electric motor in the steering rack got to 150c, and it decided to shut down without warning for my safety. Didn't feel safe. Short term I'll see if I can duct some air to that motor (the engine bay is sealed pretty tight). Long term, depending on how often this happens, I'll look into swapping the povo spec electric/hydraulic rack in. While the rack should be fine the power supply to the pump will be a pain and might be best to deal with it when I add a PDM.
    • And finally, 2 problems I really need to sort.  Firstly as Matt said the auto trans is not happy as it gets hot - I couldn't log the temps but the gauge showed 90o. On the first day I took it out back in Feb, because the coolant was getting hot I never got to any auto trans issues; but on this day by late session 3 and then really clearly in 4 and 5 as it got hotter it just would not shift up. You can hear the issue really clearly at 12:55 and 16:20 on the vid. So the good news is, literally this week Ecutek finally released tuning for the jatco 7 speed. I'll have a chat to Racebox and see what they can do electrically to keep it cooler and to get the gears, if anything. That will likely take some R&D and can only really happen on track as it never gets even warm with road use. I've also picked up some eye wateringly expensive Redline D6 ATF to try, it had the highest viscosity I could find at 100o so we will see if that helps (just waiting for some oil pan gaskets so I can change it properly). If neither of those work I need to remove the coolant/trans interwarmer and the radiator cooler and go to an external cooler....somewhere.....(goodbye washer reservoir?), and if that fails give up on this mad idea and wait for Nissan to release the manual 400R
    • So, what else.... Power. I don't know what it is making because I haven't done a post tune dyno run yet; I will when I get a chance. It was 240rwkw dead stock. Conclusion from the day....it does not need a single kw more until I sort some other stuff. It comes on so hard that I could hear the twin N1 turbos on the R32 crying, and I just can't use what it has around a tight track with the current setup. Brakes. They are perfect. Hit them hard all day and they never felt like having an issue; you can see in the video we were making ground on much lighter cars on better tyres under brakes. They are standard (red sport) calipers, standard size discs in DBA5000 2 piece, Winmax pads and Motul RBF600 fluid, all from Matty at Racebrakes Sydney. Keeping in mind the car is more powerful than my R32 and weighs 1780, he clearly knows his shit. Suspension. This is one of the first areas I need to change. It has electronically controlled dampers from factory, but everything is just way too soft for track work even on the hardest setting (it is nice when hustling on country roads though). In particular it rolls into oversteer mid corner and pitches too much under hard braking so it becomes unstable eg in the turn 1 kink I need to brake early, turn through the kink then brake again so I don't pirouette like an AE86. I need to get some decent shocks with matched springs and sway bars ASAP, even if it is just a v1 setup until I work out a proper race/rally setup later. Tyres. I am running Yoko A052 in 235/45/18 all round, because that was what I could get in approximately the right height on wheels I had in the shed (Rays/Nismo 18x8 off the old Leaf actually!). As track tyres they are pretty poor; I note GTSBoy recently posted a porker comparo video including them where they were about the same as AD09.....that is nothing like a top line track tyre. I'll start getting that sorted but realistically I should get proper sized wheels first (likely 9.5 +38 front and 11 +55 at the rear, so a custom order, and I can't rotate them like the R32), then work out what the best tyre option is. BTW on that, Targa Tas had gone to road tyres instead of semi slicks now so that is a whole other world of choices to sort. Diff. This is the other thing that urgently needs to be addressed. It left massive 1s out of the fish hook all day, even when I was trying not too (you can also hear it reving on the video, and see the RPM rising too fast compared to speed in the data). It has an open diff that Infiniti optimistically called a B-LSD for "Brake Limited Slip Diff". It does good straight line standing start 11s but it is woeful on the track. Nismo seem to make a 2 way for it.
    • Also, I logged some data from the ECU for each session (mostly oil pressures and various temps, but also speed, revs etc, can't believe I forgot accelerator position). The Ecutek data loads nicely to datazap, I got good data from sessions 2, 3 and 4: https://datazap.me/u/duncanhandleyhgeconsultingcomau/250813-wakefield-session-2?log=0&data=7 https://datazap.me/u/duncanhandleyhgeconsultingcomau/250813-wakefield-session-3?log=0&data=6 https://datazap.me/u/duncanhandleyhgeconsultingcomau/250813-wakefield-session-4?log=0&data=6 Each session is cut into 3 files but loaded together, you can change between them in the top left. As the test sessions are mostly about the car, not me, I basically start by checking the oil pressure (good, or at least consistent all day). These have an electrically controlled oil pump which targets 25psi(!) at low load and 50 at high. I'm running a much thicker oil than recommended by nissan (they said 0w20, I'm running 10w40) so its a little higher. The main thing is that it doesn't drop too far, eg in the long left hand fish hook, or under brakes so I know I'm not getting oil surge. Good start. Then Oil and Coolant temp, plus intercooler and intake temps, like this: Keeping in mind ambient was about 5o at session 2, I'd say the oil temp is good. The coolant temp as OK but a big worry for hot days (it was getting to 110 back in Feb when it was 35o) so I need to keep addressing that. The water to air intercooler is working totally backwards where we get 5o air in the intake, squish/warm it in the turbos (unknown temp) then run it through the intercoolers which are say 65o max in this case, then the result is 20o air into the engine......the day was too atypical to draw a conclusion on that I think, in the united states of freedom they do a lot of upsizing the intercooler and heat exchanger cores to get those temps down but they were OK this time. The other interesting (but not concerning) part for me was the turbo speed vs boost graph: I circled an example from the main straight. With the tune boost peaks at around 18psi but it deliberately drops to about 14psi at redline because the turbos are tiny - they choke at high revs and just create more heat than power if you run them hard all the way. But you can also see the turbo speed at the same time; it raises from about 180,000rpm to 210,000rpm which the boost falls....imagine the turbine speed if they held 18psi to redline. The wastegates are electrically controlled so there is a heap of logic about boost target, actual boost, delta etc etc but it all seems to work well
    • hahah when youtube subscribers are faster than my updates here. Yes some vid from the day is up, here:  Note that as with all track day videos it is boring watching after the bloopers at the start.  The off was a genuine surprise to me, I've literally done a thousand laps around the place and I've never had instability there; basically it rolled into oversteer, slipped, gripped and spat me out. On the way off I mowed down one of the instructor's cones and it sat there all day looking at me with accusing cone eyes as I drove past. 1:13:20 was my fastest lap, and it was in the second session, 3rd lap.  It (or me!) got slower throughout the day as it got hotter.      
×
×
  • Create New...