TECH sealing and protecting insides of doors

This looks kind of mad dog, but it works. It's a great way to seal up and protect the inside of a door, and it gets into every nook and cranny and seals up all the seams. It also seems to act as a noise dampener too.

This was a while ago, but I took pictures of it for posterity. After welding on patch panels and chopping the doors, I bead blasted the doors inside and out and vacuumed and blew all the dust out of them. I wanted to protect all that bare steel and seal up the seams for the new door skins I'd just welded on. A friend of mine told me about a friend of his that does this routinely on restorations of exotic cars so I gave it a try, and it worked.

I taped up every opening and seam on the door except for the big triangular access hole in the middle of the door. It takes a while. Use lots of tape and then more tape over that tape to make sure it stays in place. I used the blue 3M tape. It supposedly works with practically any kind of paint that'll stick to steel. I had some old DP epoxy primer that had gotten a little lumpy from sitting in the can for a few years, so I mixed up about pint of it and poured it into the door and then picked up the door and sloshed the paint around slowly by tilting and turning every which way. I used a mirror and a flashlight to look in there to see where I might have missed and sloshed it around some more. You can see the color of the primer through the masking tape when it gets in contact with it. When I could see it oozing through all of the seams everywhere, I knew they were all sealed up. The primer gets thicker the longer you slosh it around so it starts to look a little ugly on the inside of the door, but who cares. Then I hung the door up vertically and let the excess drain out onto a pile of newspapers. I have a nice thick coating of epoxy primer all over everything on the inside of my doors now, so that should protect them for many years.

I drilled a couple of 5/16" drain holes in the bottom of the doors before I started to let rain water drain out and those holes helped to let the excess epoxy primer drain out too. It's easy to sand off any spilled epoxy on the outside of the door, or you can wipe it off with solvent soaked paper towels while it's still gummy after peeling off the masking tape.

Besides working well, it's a good way to get rid of some old cans of paint that are too lumpy to spray anyway.

I think that first cup full of paint in the picture wasn't quite enough to get 100% coverage inside the door, so I mixed up another 1/2 cup full.

 

Nice, I will have to give it a try, Thanks

 

true, it may look like hell but thats a great idea...I have restored dozens of vehicles and had to replace countless doors due to inadequite corrosion protection on the interior of them...nice post rusty
all the best,
fasttruck

 

Great idea,did you thin it a bit to get it to flow down in the cracks??

 

I just mixed it like it was ready to spray. It flowed pretty well at first, but after sloshing it around a while, it gets a little more sluggish. It might give you more sloshing time if you thin it just a little.

Oh yeah, wear a respirator while you do this, or your lungs will be blasted by some intense fumes while sloshing the paint around. Your arms will get a good workout, so don't forget to eat your Wheaties in the morning.

 

Had a girlfriend in HS that managed to puke down the inside of my
door. I pulled the panel and took it to the car wash and tried to wash
and vacuum it out. 30 yrs. later guess what rusted from the inside out. Yep, that same area I so vividly remember cleaning out. Picked
up a new door skin at the Turkey Run last weekend so I'll give this a try for sure. I'll even take some pics so I can show her next year at
the 30th reunion. Thanks for the timely tech!

 

Hell, the insides of your doors look better than the outside of my car.