Painting shocks?

Living in the salt belt blows.

My junk once looked like this:


After 6 days commuting in the snow it looked like this:


I'll get the aluminum cleaned up with some polish, air tools, and plenty of roloc discs but I know it'll just get nasty again once the salt sprayers come back out. Waxing helps but doesn't fix the issue completely.

Has anyone tried painting their shocks? I know it'll have a negative effect on heat dissipation but I'm hoping it's slight. Also, the same salt that corrodes the metal will chip away at the painted finish, so that's also a concern.

Anybody have some ideas of what's possible to keep these things looking like anything other than scrap metal?

(Posted in LT due to the shock temperature concerns. That doesn't come up much in other types of wheeling.)

 

Fox shock oil is good up to 450 degrees. Shock temps up to 500 degrees have been seen on really rough courses like San Felipe. Definitely need high temp paint for that.

Those look damn good! Nice that they're up and away from flying debris kicked up by the wheels.

At least there might be hope to restore some of the "show" to match the "go"

 

6 days of commuting. Then it was laid up while I chopped the UCAs and installed heims.

I can guarantee it was only 6 days of use in the snow.

 

Since that pic was taken I started coating the threads with anti-seize. The collars still spin so that's one thing I have going for me.

Clearcoat is porous, unfortunately. I learned that when I painted my custom grill emblem and it rusted a day later.

Caliper paint will probably be the direction I take but I'll keep looking around a bit more before making a purchase. It'd be nice to only have to do this once.

 

Hadn't heard of that product before. Looks like it could be the right option based on their website. Will definitely do more reading on that stuff! Thanks!

 

Sweet. There's one not far from my place.