I removed the stainless side trim off my 51 fleetline to clean it up (or maybe leave it off and fill the holes) anyways there was a fair amount of rust underneath, so I cleaned it up with a 3M stripper wheel. the sheet metal is pitted and some pretty deep. Whats the best way to finish it off? Do I make sure everything is clean and then fill the it pits with body filler? Thanks in advance!
Make sure all the rust is gone for sure, by media blasting, or picking at it with something sharp and sanding or wirebrushing and/or using chemicals to strip the rust. Don't leave anything that looks brown or black. Then once you're down to bare shiny steel, it's kind of a judgement call. If the pits are shallow and don't weaken the metal, you might get by with some filler. If you get inside the trunk and see light shining through lots of holes in the fenders, then you can either weld the pinholes shut if they're small, or cut out large rotten areas and make patch panels. The rust is probably in places where leaves or dirt caked up behind the strips and sat there soggy against the sheetmetal. It just depends on how big the rusty areas are and how much work you want to do. Get a sharp ice-pick sort of tool and poke around at it. Some parts that might look okay might just crumble to pieces when you start poking at them. Chip and scrape and get rid of all of the rust, or it'll just come back to haunt you later. For welding pinholes shut, I like to hold a piece of copper behind the pinhole and do a quick tack on the outside, then grind it smooth.
Give it a serious cleaning mayhaps some naval jelly or some other type of rust remover. Then paint it with fiberglass resin ( like you use to glass stuff only without the cloth) then give it a skim coat of mud or bondo or whatever they call it where you are from. You got to seal it or the rust will come back.
Fiberglass resin? thats a new one on me. Get it clean and rust free maybe some etch primer then epoxy primer then hi fill primer sand till smooth reapply hi fill if needed sand till smooth then paint. Dave
Dave there are two ways to make it perminant one is to completely remove all the oxidized metal the otherway is to seal it so no air will get to it. Mud and primer even mud primer and paint will not seal it off. The rust will rweturn in time. The fiberglass resin seals it up. Its a trick I learned from an old body guy way back when I was in highschool( about 35 or 6 years ago).
epoxy is an amasing thing i work at a boat yard and we us it all the time for some od ball stuf just like this
rust... my favorite subject. on the body of a car where someday there will be a nice paint job you must remove it. do not treat it do not neutralize it do not cover it with magic elixers what I would do is get one of those sandblast guns with the bag of sand and the rubber tip. you press the tip against the metal to be blasted, squeeze the trigger and blast til you have clean grey metal or a hole. the sand recycles itself back into the bag. no mess ( well maybe a little) you could prolly start off with a wire wheel to get any heavy stuff. leave no specs of rust. you do like a quarter size spot at a time. then you go ahead and use maybe an etching primer, and some high build. block the high build and re apply until the pits are gone. if you feel the need to use putty of any kind use something catalized. if there are holes weld them up as stated earlier with the copper backing if necessary. I'd use a plug on any hole bigger than 3/16". remember to watch your heat in both the welding and the grinding process.
I usually wire wheel or sandblast it. If you cant get it all clean then use a spray rust converter, then primer and sand. If the primer doesn't fill the pits then I may spread some glazing and spot putty on it and wet sand that smooth.
I was a body man for 6 -odd years.....fixed a lot of rust....do exactly what 49ratfink said. I usually took it one step further and just cut the metal completely out and replaced it, but that may be viewed as a little extreme if the rust isn't all the way through. Gary
Jim Bailie Jim Bailie Bailie Customs Windsor Ontario, Canada 519-972-9362 [email protected] Shop Albums (The most popular albums on the site) Specialties: Custom Car Builder Has a metal spray on system he swears by. His work is world class and he shares so much of his tooling and custom built machines. I suggest a phone call to Jim will be a great eye opener. DFE
Jim Bailie of Bailie Customs Windsor Ontario, Canada 519-972-9362 [email protected] Shop Albums (The most popular albums on the site) Specialties: Custom Car Builder is a world class workman. He has a metal spraying system he swears by. I suggest a phone call to him will provide some additional information and options. Jim shares his techniques, tips, custom machine designs and provides excellent photos and commentary of his processes. HTH, DFE
Rat Fink, your right on! Sounds like you have been doing body work for some time. 55ford, listen to him, Ive been doing this shit for 20 plus years, he has given you the best advise. DO NOT use fiberglass resin. Fiberglass and sheet metal expand and contract at different rates, fiberglass will just simply pop off the metal. If you are not possitive that you have ALL the holes filled, use a product called All Metal, the stuff is the absolute shits to work with, but is better than anything with fiberglass in it. Here is a tip to double check if all the holes are filled, Put your pain in the ass buddy, (or a small child will work,) in the trunk and Simply have them hold your trouble light on the back side of worked area, light shines through, keep working. Also the advise of sand blasting is excellent, just don't warp the metal, work back and forth don't stay in one place too long. My advise is to just think about what you are doing, then seperate the B.S. and just do it. There is not too many mistakes that can't be rectified, it is just a question of how much time you want to spend fixing all of them. Good Luck!
Thanks for all the great advice! The fender is really solid even with the pitting, I poked at it and no problems or pinholes. Here's a picture, sorry the quality isnt really good, you can see some clean metal where there was no trim. Im sure its just my imagination but it seems that were the trim was feels like it is raised when I run my hand over it, but that doesn't make too much sense does it? Im prolly just feeling the bumpiness of the pitting.
I have used All Metal for a number of years and have been pleased with it. Not a rust cure, but is not affected by moisture as much as plastic. You can wipe down the bare metal with metal prep and then prime it with DP primer. My PPG salesman says to use filler on top of the DP, but I am not too fond of doing that, preferring to use the filler and then the primer. Good luck on your project.
Also the advise of sand blasting is excellent, just don't warp the metal, the tool I recommended you use does one little quarter sized section at a time. there is no way you could warp the metal with this tool. it's got a rubber nozzle on it and you smoosh it up against the metal and blast. the sand doesn't go flying all over the garage, it recycles back into the bag. it only holds like a handful of sand but uses it over and over with minimal loss. kind of hard to tell in the photo since your focus was on the chrome caps but it looks like you have enough rust there to be a problem for future paint. eastwood sells the little blaster. make sure you buy the one with the rubber tips. repeat after me: "I will not put fiberglass or miracle cures over my rust I will sandblast with the tool 49RATFINK recommends"
'49 Ratfink Nevermind what I have just posted I just noticed that you are one of Javiers butt buddies. Fix it however you want I don't know nuthin'.
Can you share a link? I'm looking on the Eastwood site and can't find the tool you are referencing. Thanks!
here's one , you can take a small rubber ball ( tennis ball or larger) cut it in half. Put a hole in it to put the nozzle through , hold the open side against the body when you blast , put a bucket under the work area & dump the 1/2 ball into it . You can get a cheap siphon feed baster for about $20 .
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