surface rust on powder coated bumper
 

I have a JRC front bumper/skid plate that I had powder coated a little over a year ago. I'm not religious about washing my Jeep, but when I did yesterday (finally nice out)- I noticed a pretty significant amount of surface rust on it.. including my powder coated winch fairlead.
Did I get a crap powder coat job, or is this normal? I am in northern IL, so I do have salt on the roads in the winter.. but it also wasn't my DD this winter.
I searched the forum and web to look for tips on how to clean and saw evapo-rust.. this ok? I'm afraid of using a wire brush on it.. should I be? I'd rather try to remove the surface rust rather than just spraying it with rustolium. That said- I do have a spray can of matched black textured paint from the place I did the powder coating.

Thanks!!

This is unavoidable and normal. Even without salted roads, there will always be rust popping up just from rocks chipping paint off on the road.
I had my PSC Brawler lineX'd to avoid this.
That's really the only thing to keep it complete rust free...essentially fully encapsulating the whole thing.
Plus it looks great!

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I'll have to post a picture of this later. I don't think this is from purely from rocks popping up. I'm not talking about small isolated circles, it's fairly even. Sure, it could be from thousands of tiny rocks. Any tips for taking care of what's there now? Also, for the bed liner- are you doing this to primed/painted metal, or raw? The JCR I have came unfinished.

Here's some pics. As a side note- the 2.5 year old powder coated from factory, smittybilt side steps hardly have any of this.. if any. Keep in mind that my bumper is only about a year old.. maybe 1.5 years tops and was hardly driven this winter.



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That is from crappy work when powder coating, metal wasn't cleaned and prepped and then a thin layer of powder

Oh yeah...that's crap powder coating.
I'd really take it off and get in lineX'd for peace of mind.

Anything you rattle can on is gonna crap out again anyway.

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I had the feeling. Hopefully these guys will stand behind their work. I'll refrain from slamming them until I hear back :)

So- if they don't redo this... Anyone have any tips for removing the rust without further damaging the powder coat? Once removed- I can paint it with the stuff I got from them.

It's steel plate. I'd hit it with a wire brush on a drill. Too much to do by hand. IMO.

I am a powder coater, I would give a year warranty on anything that goes out of my shop against my workmanship. If its destroyed from abuse that's different but if you were my customer, I would re do it for you no issue. That's how you keep customers.

Thanks, Kojack! This certainly helps. This might be an uphill battle since I had this done in late 2013. Had it been warmer out and I thought to wash my Jeep and start tinkering again, I might have caught this in < 1 year. We'll see. Such a GIANT pain in the ass to first drive to the shop for them to inspect (not very close), remove all these components at home, bring there, go pick up, then install again at home. Plus I have new wheels/tires/lift in the mail... last thing I want is to wait a few more weeks for this process to be completed! But, better in the long run.

So besides basically grinding the rust off- do you have any thoughts about what might be used to clean this up?