Rust or Not?

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Rogerdodger

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Hello! I am posting a picture of, I think, rust but maybe not. I bought my 68 Dart about 6 months ago. It has a few small, pencil erasure and smaller bubbles just above the rear wheel wells on both sides. They are hard when I push on them with no give and there has been no change in them as far as I can tell. The car was painted a few years ago and the seller told me it was the paint process that caused it and not rust. I'm not so sure. Has anyone seen this and it was not rust, and what would be the best action at this point. I am not a body man but I believe I could fix this. Humm..... Any thoughts on the matter? Thanks.
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How about a bigger photo.

What does it look like from the back side
 
Yeah. One of the most common areas for rust, bubbles which usually indicate improperly repaired rust now bubbling and it is something to do with the paint process. I call BS. Are there other things the seller told you that turned out to be not completely true?

It is hard to tell from the small picture, but from what I see it is old rust reemerging.
 
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Yup, I agree with Dave. There was rust there before the repaint, they cleaned it up a little and painted over it. That covered it up for awhile, but now it’s starting to crawl back out. If you don’t get all of it, it just comes back later.
 
Yeah. One of the most common areas for rust, bubbles which usually indicate improperly repaired rust now bubbling and it is something to do with the paint process. I call BS. Are there other things the seller told you that turned out to be not completely true?

It is hard to tell from the small picture, but from what I see it is old rust reemerging.
The seller seemed to be pretty straight forward. He pointed out things I may or may not have seen so I do not think he was trying to hide things. I did expect to have things emerge as time goes on and I did purchase the car with the bubbles at no extra charge. So far nothing earth shattering has slapped me in the face.
 
That's what putting Plastic/bondo in rust pinholes looks like 6 months to a year after paint, pending on location/climate...…...
 
Sure looks like rust to me. Especially in that area.
What would be the best way to tackle this problem? I'm not a body man but is this something an inexperienced person could do or is it best left for the pros? It may be just surface rust with no holes yet as it feels very solid. Anyone have a clue what this would roughly cost to fix?
 
Those bubbles indicate my above post.
There must be thin metal from rust behind surface creating pin holes that were covered up or
surface rust ground down initially leaving half the thickness of sheetmetal with rust behind it eventually
overtime moisture from behind breaks thru metal pushing out plastic initial repair.(bubbles)
That area needs to be cut out going inches if not more beyond bubbles and new sheetmetal welded in properly.
Hopefully its just those relatively small areas and not complete wheel well area....

Dave
 
To fix it all the rust has to be removed and replace with metal.
Well I guess this issue is bigger than I want to tackle. Thanks for all of the input and it anyone has dealings with reputable classic car garages in my area, DC, Richmond Va area Please let me know. Thanks again.
 
You can have it repaired and re-sprayed and then you'll eventually see it come back, but it will cost less, like 250-500$

OR you have a quarter put on and spend a **** ton more, but never see it again.
 
As others have said, it’s rust given where the bubbling is located and you don’t know for sure if it was bare metal before it was painted.

If it’s there, it’s also on the inner wheel well. Odds are really good it will also appear on the passenger side soon too and lower rear quarter panels. Only way to get rid of it is to strip it down to metal and then cut out the rust and weld in new metal.
 
Were it me and I was serious about fixing the problem, I'd strip the area around the wheel well down to determine just how bad the problem is.You might not need an entire quarter, to me that seems excessive. A good hot rod body shop can trim out the rusted area and replace the metal. Won't be cheap, but it won't be like replacing a quarter either.
 
It's difficult to tell until you get the paint off. Could potentially be something you could fix with a mig welder without needing to replace the metal but chances are you'll need the metal replaced there. I wouldn't have the entire quarter replaced. Just a small patch panel welded in there. It's been a few years since the repaint so the odds of there being more rust around that area is fairly low since there's no other bubbling. Plus doing it that way would make the repainting of the area a lot cheaper.

The body shop actually introduced rust on the lower quarter of my Duster when they painted it. Never had any rust on the quarter from 1971 through 2010. They painted the car and a few months later there's bubbling on my lower quarter. I took it back in and they "fixed" it and repainted it. By "fixed it", I mean they just sanded it flat, lathered some body filler in there and spot painted it so it lasted just long enough to where it didn't start bubbling again until they went out of business a few months later.
 
Pin holes in sheetmtal. The deal is it is sanded down, clean metal right, then the shop or whoever applies epoxy primer, then body filler, then blah blah ....... the porblem is that area rusted from inside of that panel to begin with and continues to rust and let moisture in under the epoxy primer and thus the filler. Filler tends to attract moisture anyway, in this case moisture from the inside of the panel, NOT the outside !
All it takes is a few pinholes and where moisture gets to it from the inside for this phenominom (spell check) too occur!!!
 
The reason body shop rust repairs don't work is that they don't treat the metal chemically .When I did my 65 Barracuda back in the early 90's I started with a pretty rusted set of quarters.There was no replacement parts back then so I needed to fix things myself.I cut out where I could and replaced the metal but where the pin holes were and in places where I couldn't really cut it out I sanded it down ,wire wheeled it then used this stuff to treat the metal OSPHO Rust Converter/Metal Primer | West Marine
After I did the body and paint I used that car ( never in rain or snow ) and kept it in a garage when not in use.I put over 60000 miles on it and sold it in 2007 looking like this photo taken a few weeks before I let her go. The rust never came back from 1993 to 2007 .So, you can repair it and if you take your time and do it right it will be a success .

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I like Ospho and have used it a lot. Cars come and go here. 4-5 years ago I did a car and did my usual fabbing, cutting rusted panels. On the bottom part of the doors were a few minute pin holes, I DA sanded it to bare metal, rubbed on some ospho to take care of any amounts of rust that might be there, treated the inside of the doors as well with Ospho after I wire brushed it best I could. I treated the inside of the doors to some epoxy primer, and then heavy enamel over that. It took 5 years for the pinhole rust to bubble now. I feel it reason being water and debris gets into the insides of the doors trapping moisture.
Only thing else I could have done, rather than just cut it out, was to spray undercoat into the insides of the doors.
I cut that little area out other week and welded in good metal.
 
So here's what you could potentially expect to see. This is also why it's hard to stop rust by patching sometimes.
My car had some collision damage from long ago that was covered up with filler. The damaged was by the door, this is lower rear. Long story short I decided to just replace the quarter. This is what I found, from the outside it looks similar to what you have going on. There was no sign of rust from the trunk drop off either.

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So here's what you could potentially expect to see. This is also why it's hard to stop rust by patching sometimes.
My car had some collision damage from long ago that was covered up with filler. The damaged was by the door, this is lower rear. Long story short I decided to just replace the quarter. This is what I found, from the outside it looks similar to what you have going on. There was no sign of rust from the trunk drop off either.

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If I remove the bubbles and sand down to metal and have pin holes, then there must be rust between the outer fender and the wheel housing. How do I stop the rust without ripping open the complete fender lip.
 
If I remove the bubbles and sand down to metal and have pin holes, then there must be rust between the outer fender and the wheel housing. How do I stop the rust without ripping open the complete fender lip.
I'm not a body guy by trade(disclaimer)
You can't really, you either leave it or hide it(like someone mentioned earlier and keep it out of the weather) or you tear into it knowing it could end up needing a whole quarter. If you patch start small and increase the size until you get to clean metal on the inside of what you remove
Be careful this is where the snow ball starts to pick up speed
 
Again, nothing wrong with plastic if its applied minimally over solid original or welded ground sheet metal.
I welded some patches on my 67 barracuda
In 1990, 30 years ago, no bubbles.......
+ I dont drive in rain or wet conditions.
 
Here is another option. Use this as an excuse to stretch the well and kill 2 birds with one stone. You'll have new sheet metal and you'll be able to run a taller tire without relocating the rear farther back

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