Rust Repair Maiden Voyage

-
I have a question: why not use a wire wheel?

4" grinder with a wire wheel is very effective at removing paint, bondo and rust, but removes very little metal. If it's thin enough for the wire wheel to remove, it needed to be replaced.
 
I started with 60 grit and a block, then got impatient and switched to an orbital sander. I haven't worked with polyester filler such as Bondo, but that epoxy is pretty tough stuff. Hopefully that means it will last longer...
IMG_1930.png
 
How can I remove the rocker panel molding without breaking the clips?

You probably can't. However, if you have a well supplied ACE hardware store (like mine) they carry a selection of old style molding clips. If you can't find any. Let me know. Take pictures and measurements and I'll see what I can find for you.
 
Turns out I'm allergic to the 410 filler. I won't be sanding that stuff inside the garage again. Anyway, I applied a skim coat of the 410, sanded with 60 grit, then applied another very thin coat and sanded with 60, 100, 220, and 400 grit. It's not perfect, but perfection wasn't the goal.
IMG_1940.png

The weather is too cold for painting, but I went ahead and sprayed some 2 in 1 primer (Transtar 4603) to keep moisture out until I get a chance to paint. I'm painting up to the lower of the two parallel horizontal creases in the sheet metal.
IMG_1944.png
 
On Saturday it was warm and calm enough to paint outdoors. I learned a few lessons, but overall I'm happy with how it turned out. I used a Preval bottle and a half pint of custom-mixed paint from Finishmaster. The paint guy started with the F5 formula but he said he added a lot of flattener to make it match the 43-year-old paint on the car. I sprayed a metal can first to see if the color matched, and it was pretty good. Here's the mixed bottle:
IMG_2011.png

And here's the tape job. You can see I left a little red showing, about 1/4 to 1/2 inch. That enabled me to be sure I was covering all the primer with enough coats of red. Rear of the wheel well, I lined up the tape with the kink in the panel, which did a nice job hiding the slightly different color of the new paint. Forward of the wheel well I didn't have that luxury. It's not shown, but I also taped off the brake drum. You can see the half-assed nature of my work by the fact that I didn't bother to remove the rocker molding, but just wedged a stir stick behind it so I could sort of spray behind it.
IMG_2010.png

And here's the final paint. I lost track of how many coats it was, probably 10 or more. I used about 8 oz of mixed paint in a 4:1:2 color:hardener:reducer mix.
quarter_after_repaint.jpeg

You can see a diagonal line in front of the wheel well where the new paint is a little brighter than the old, but it looks way better than it did. Lessons learned:
  • Spray away from a tape line, not toward it, to keep the edge "soft." I have a pretty significant ridge where the tape was.
  • Take the time to get your primer coat really smooth before you paint. I deliberately chose to paint over a less-than-perfect primer coat because I wasn't going for a show-quality finish. But I ended up with a run where I was trying to get paint to fill in a tiny pit in the primer coat. The paint just kept building up around the pit until I got impatient and overdid that area. No regrets, but another coat of primer would have improved the outcome without a lot more work.
  • Stay away from plants? Little bugs kept landing in my wet paint and I had to pick them out with tweezers. After the last coat I should have just let the bug dry in the paint. Pulling it out did more damage than leaving it in would have.
  • Don't shake the Preval bottle after the propellant can is on. It says DO NOT SHAKE right on the box, in big bold letters. Somehow I missed that, and paint spilled out all over the can and the bottle.
I'll update later on, when I see how quickly the rust works its way back through...
 
You can roll the tape edge so you don't get a sharp cutoff. Nice work! Turned out much better than I thought it would. Hope it lasts.
 
Nice quick fix job and it looks decent which was your end goal. Great idea posting the lessons learned part; that's helpful for the rest of us who might be interested yet also shows your pretty secure.

My brother did a very similar repair in the early '90s on my Scamp on the passenger side lower rear quarter panel and had similar results. It was better than seeing the perforation rust and also prevented it from spreading faster.
 
It's been 18 months now, so here's the promised follow-up. The rear quarter looks the same as it did the day I finished this job. The car has only been washed/rained on a handful of times, but there's no sign of any rust at all in that area. So I'm calling that job a success.

The forward part where the quarter overlaps the rocker is a different story. The bubbling started under the new paint within weeks. If I had it to do over again, I'd pull the rocker trim and cut out more metal along the bottom of the quarter and maybe the rocker too.

One other lesson learned that I didn't realize until later: I got a good bit of overspray on the trunk (you can't see it, but it feels rough to the touch). Clearly I should have covered a much larger area of the car before I painted.
 
Thanks for the update. Sorry to hear it didn't hold up 100%.

Maybe try using a clay bar to get the overspray off the trunk?
 
-
Back
Top