Rusty dish

Gwynston

Our dish was installed new only 18 months ago and is already getting pretty rusty. If it gets worse will it start affecting reception?

What can I do about it? I seem to remember reading on here before about what paint can be used (sorry, can't get the search facility to work). Do I need to get the rust off first?

watty

Wirebrush all loose material. Car paint is poor as it is not very waterproof.

Any non-metal paint. Exterior polyurethene or Hammerite.

mustang68

My dish started rusting on the second week :eek: I think that it got some of the paint chipped off it on installation.

Wishbone Ash

Gwynston wrote:

If it gets worse will it start affecting reception?

Mine has been rusty for years (I'm right beside the sea) and it hasn't affected the reception.

Rippy

mustang68 wrote:

My dish started rusting on the second week :eek: I think that it got some of the paint chipped off it on installation.

Yep, sounds normal. Don't blame the installer though. i find most sky dishes (reflectors and parts) have paint missing straight out of the box. I always offer sky customers living close to the sea the chance to upgrade to a triax 64 cm dish and bracket. These have all parts well galvanised or aluminium and are virtually rustproof.

Rippy

Wishbone Ash wrote:

Mine has been rusty for years (I'm right beside the sea) and it hasn't affected the reception.

It will when the L arm of the bracket is structurally weakened by rust and starts waving in the wind. most do eventually.

Gwynston

watty wrote:

Wirebrush all loose material. Car paint is poor as it is not very waterproof.

Any non-metal paint. Exterior polyurethene or Hammerite.

Sorry to drag this up again. Was looking in Woodies today and still can't work out what to buy.

Do you mean "non-metallic"? It's just that there was plenty of stuff like Hammerite for use on railings and gates etc and it was called "metal paint".

Is that OK? i.e. "paint for metal"?

Am I likely to mis-align my dish when brushing off the rust and/or painting it? How difficult is it to re-align if I do?

watty

Hammerite is non-metallic, a type of fast drying enamel for painting metal.

Paints for Metal can be metallic OR non-metallic (Zinc primer = metallic).

Some "metallic finishes" have actually no metal, some have aluminium. It's confusing all right.

Gwynston

Thanks - so regular Hammerite for railings etc. should be OK, as long as it's not metallic and doesn't have zinc primer in it. (I'll check the small print, because some of them said "no primer needed", so I'll make sure there's no zinc in what I buy.)

I wanted to be sure Hammerite was OK because I get the impression from the ads that that kind of heavy enamel goes on very thick (much more thick than whatever's on the dish to begin with) so I didn't want to affect reception. It is for railings after all...

Smeagol

Yep, sounds normal. Don't blame the installer though. i find most sky dishes (reflectors and parts) have paint missing straight out of the box. I always offer sky customers living close to the sea the chance to upgrade to a triax 64 cm dish and bracket. These have all parts well galvanised or aluminium and are virtually rustproof.

I agree 100%.
Esp. the Thomson ones. And regarding the Triax. I offer the same thing, Triax or Gibertini, whichever I can get cheaper.;) And both even work for multifeed setups.