Hey Guys, my new toy is a Yard-Find '50 Chrysler Coupe Gasser. SBC, solid axle, Tunnel Ram, etc. Issue is that the factory white paint on one side was removed at least 20 years ago then left parked outdoors. So of course it's just rough, but straight, rust-orange sheet metal now on the whole driver's side. So not wanting a half paint / half patina job, I'm gonna paint the whole damn car. Has anyone here ever removed an acre of BAD surface rust prior to paint? Any clever tricks for this would be greatly appreciated. ---------------- Thx!
Patient sandblasting, with a small nozzle and fine sand, should do it. If you use a bigass compressor and coarse sand and big nozzle and lots of pressure, you'll destroy the metal. Take your time.
A good cup brush on an angle grinder will knock most of it off without digging into the metal. I took light surface rust off the front fender on my ot rig with my Eastwood Contour with the brush drum and then with a sanding drum. Still if you get most of it off with a cup brush you can use a DA style sander to get it down to clean bare metal ready to prep and prime.
X2 on what squirrel said, plus a lot of sanding. May even have to do like the TV shops and skim it with filler if it has pits.
I used these 3" bristle brushes from 3M on parts with surface rust, cleans up metal and doesn't cut metal. Would take a while on the while car but they come in various grits.
I have had good luck with these. Stick it in a regular drill and take your time as you don't want too much heat created.
Blasting will remove less material (not make whole thickness thinner) than an abrasive.of any sort since blasting will get into pits and clean them out.
I’m with Jim and Johnny, OT GM late 80’s car, paint on the roof went to hell and began peeling. Sat out for maybe 15 years. Tried just about everything above and more. I rigged up a siphon blaster and even then took my time on it. I was able to get away with high build prime though and not skim coating it.
That contour tool from Eastwood does a nice job on that. Just don’t try and get it all at once go from headlights to taillights like three times should be good.
Fifteen years ago I built a 57 Chevy for a guy that had been stripped and sat outside for a couple of years. The owner took on the job of sandblasting the body, while he didn't warp anything to badly the roof and quarters were dead metal. It was like they had been annealed, no strength at all. I found that by hammer and dollying dents the roof would get more ridged but it was still soft. I ended up dollying the entire roof and one 20" by 20" aria in the middle I glued a thin piece of sheet metal on the bottom for strength. The quarters I replaced with new. I don't know how much a roof skin was at that time but I'm positive he paid me more than it would have been to replace the panel.
A lot heavier/thicker metal than I worked with. I think to top side will need abrasive blasting, side might be good with mechanical. To add to my original replay, I didn’t have access on the Eastwood tool, just wire wheels, cup brushes, heck, even my Mikita with a 120 wouldn’t get me to bare metal without (IMO) screwing the top up. I know many have more experience than I do, but just sharing mine.
Wire wheel seems to burnish the rust. After it knocks off the loose stuff it quits removing rust and starts polishing the rust. At least for me that’s what I get.
After knocking down some of the heavy surface rust, start treating it with a rust converter like OSPHO or something similar. Then sand some more, treat some more, repeat until it's clean.
too bad they don't have big vapor blasting booths. that works great w/o metal removal. we had one in exp machining when i was at pratt whitney
I've used those on several cars, but I buy the ones made to fit 4.5" angle grinders. They remove paint fantastic, and also rust with a bit more effort.
What about Water blasting,or dustless blasting,those guys come to your place and seem to do a good job of it.There is a special process to get the paint to stick and it isnt supposed to warp any of the sheet metal.Harvey
What about blasting with walnut shell instead of sand. They sell walnut shell over at Northern Tool pretty reasonable in cost.
Careful blasting would work, I personally would start with 80 grit DA discs and get it as shiny as I could before I started the blasting though. The less time you need to spend blasting, the less likely warpage is. I bet that'll clean up OK. I don't trust "rust converters" or anything like that, I'd only use something like that in a non-visible, non-accessible area as kind of a last-resort type thing. I'm sure they have their place, but this is all very accessible and should be able to be cleaned.
You could coat it with navel jelly and within an hour or two you will have clean metal to work with, you will just need to clean it afterwards with a water/baking soda solution before priming
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