How do you ground a corvette to stop static electicity? I've tried many methods so far and none work. I took an aligator clip and attached it to various points of the car and the other end of the wire to a ground yet when I tack rag it or spray it with air I get static zaps! What's the trick?

Lee

Don't blow it off. Wipe it with a water-based cleaner like PPG DX394. Use several rags and keep turning them so you take the dirt and sanding residue off completely. Fibreglass is non-conductive so the wire trick does nothing. Also, don't use a solvent based cleaner, it is possible to have static ignite the rags.

A friend of mine shoots quite a few snowmobiles and had trouble with static, he now tapes drier softener/anti static sheets to the underside of the cowl so it hangs, and says it works. ?????????

Should I and how do I ground myself as I'm painting? If I cant discharge the static on the fiberglass then should I try to ground myself?

Interesting about the dryer sheets!

Lee

Use a spray bottle and lightly mist your clothes and shoes with water. There is also an anti-static clothing spray for this. Ask your wife where to get it. Women do this all the time to prevent static cling.

Lots of arguments among painters on this issue... It is true that theoretically, fiberglass/SMC is non-conductive and grounding the car won't make any difference. I'm just a pore, ignert hillbilly, so maybe an intelligent engineer can tell me how a non-conductive material like fiberglas can collect so much static electricity.

I've painted many Corvettes and I belong to the ignert group that is convinced that grounding the car from the frame to a ground rod does help...not much, but it helps. If the floor of the booth is wet/damp, attaching a short length of chain from the frame to the floor will help too. If the floor isn't wet, not much is going to happen unless an in-ground rod is available.

The most effective thing I do is do the normal wipe with a rag while blowing off with air, then as a final wipe down, I use nothing but my naked hand while blowing with air. Sometimes I have to do the hand job smile.gif twice to dissipate most of the static.

Another controversial and quite expensive method is the Ionizer Guns. The last time I had anything to do with those, Safety Klean owned the company. I don't know if Safety Klean still supplies them or not. Some painters say they don't work well, others say they help a little. They are definately too expensive for home hobby use.

I have always found what Dave said to be true, and that is one reason the waterborne cleaners are recommended, to cut static electricity.

I don't have any idea how the static electricity is produced (at a science level). I have been told the air going over it is the cause, either driving the car or blowing it off with an air blower. So it makes sense to blow it off as little as possible. It also makes sense to use the waterborne cleaner as water kills the static (so I was told at the S-W classes).

Grounding it, heck I don't know, it makes sense to me that it would help as Vettefella says.

Ok boys and girls smile.gif If you know me very long you find out I really want to know how how something works on that "science level" to understand how to deal with it. It is just how I need to understand things. So, I just did a search and low and behold.... What causes static electricity (click here) (http://www.electricityforum.com/static-electricity.html)

What is Static Electricity?
Static electricity is an electric charge built up on persons or objects through friction. It is most familiar as an occasional annoyance in seasons of low humidity, but can be destructive and harmful in some situations. When working in direct contact with integrated cicuit electronics, or in the presence of flammable gas, care must be taken to avoid accumulating and discharging a static charge.
Static electricity is electricity that does not flow in a current. Static electricity is generated by rubbing two nonmagnetic objects together. The friction between the two objects generates static electricity because the substance with an excess of electrons transfers them to the positively-charged substance. Usually, substances that don't conduct current electricity (insulators) are good at holding static electricity. These substances may include rubber, plastic, glass or pitch. The electrons that are transferred in static electricity are stored on the surface of an object


Though it doesn't go into great detail on a molecular level it confirms what S-W taught me. Friction is the culprit, air blowing over the surface, your hand rubbing it, what ever, causes static electricity. It also mentions Vettes point about the "non conductor" conducting static electricity.

According to this info, it is most prevalent during conditions of low humitity, sooooooo, that tells me "high" humitity like a rag soaked with water or a waterborne cleaner will kill it.

(Oh Boy. This string could die right here or go in for days.)

Static electricity is wierd stuff. That's what lightening is. Nobody knows exactly why it strikes what it does and where. It's been know to bypass lightening rods and strike the ground or objects nearby for no apparent reason. (I personally have seen it leap from a lightening rod to a nearby object.) Therefore, trying to predict how a static charge is going act can be just a complex. However, we in the electrical engineering world know a few things that seem to work.

Whenever we work on computers, especially when installing sensitive circuits like memories, we ALWAYS use a ground strap velcroed to our wrist and tied to a ground to bleed off any static surface charge on our bodies. Memory and processor chips are some of the most sensitive circuits there are. They can be destroyed by the presence of even the slightest level of static charge. The ground strap method insures there isn't enough static charge build up to affect them. It SHOULD work on a fiberglass car body and a bodyman if connected properly.

If you tie the fiberglass car body to a good electrical ground, and you tie yourself to the same common ground (or the car body), there SHOULD be no ability to create a difference of potential (static charge) between you and the car. Where you can have a problem is any part of the car body that is isolated from the ground connection. Also, if you wear rubber gloves while painting or working, the spray gun will not be grounded. You would want to connect a wire lead or ground strap from the gun to your wrist.

I'm not a body man and have never worked with fiberglass bodies. But, I am in the field of eliminating static charges. If you can't prevent them, by raising the rel. humidity level to over 50% as we do in computer labs, then provide a path to ground to bleed them off. A fact of physics is that ground is ground. If you make the car body and you ground, theoretically you can't have a static charge. (I know. If it was that simple to solve it wouldn't be a problem to the body and paint industry :rolleyes: )

Just my $.02 worth.

Cool stuff. I work in the plastics industry where high speed processing causes static build up on polyethylene film. The static makes the film cling, so there is a need to use antistatic agents to prevent this. An antistat is basically a hydrophilic substance that coats the surface of the plastic. Water from the atmosphere wets out onto the surface, dissipating surface charge. This is also a problem in truck bed liners. There have been reported fires from static discharge while filling up at gas stations. The truck bed liner accumulates a surface charge due to friction from the wind. When the driver touches the bed while pumping gas, the surface charge goes to ground and can ignite gas vapors. To prevent surface charge build-up, use water with a little surfactant (soap) in it.

Thanks everyone for you input!

OK, here's what I did. I used an anti-static wrist band with aligator clip and atached it to a wire that clipped to the cars frame and to a fiberglass part then went to a ground. This gave me a common ground between the car and me. This worked perfectly, there was no static at all! I rubbed and tacked the whole car with no zap at all! I kept this arrangement when I painted too.

Lee

Any day where I learn something new, it's a good day.

Excellent stuff!

Don't be afraid to use the spray bottle on the floor around the car and you too. One to the ways we kill static in a carpeted area is to mist the floor lightly with water. I've ever done this at home when having to work on my computer to avoid static from the rug. Kevin was right on.