Rust repair

[paigeoliver]

Well, I did it, I ordered all the rust repair panels from JC Whitney for this bad boy.

Lower front rear quarter drivers and passengers
Drivers and passengers rear quarter repair panels.
drivers and passengers rocker repair panels
drivers and passengers upper wheel arch.

It only ended up being $217 and they had a free shipping deal going on.

Now, how do I install this stuff. Being that I can't weld, and certainly can't do cosmetic quality body repair welding. I was thinking about just riveting them on after cutting out the rusted areas.

[Bones]

Dude, that thing is just screaming for a Ghost Busters conversion. Go on, do it - You know you want to.

[Jabba]

Hey paige, glad to see you back. I was reading your post over my morning coffee and my wife walked by and saw the picture and says,

"that looks like something from pimp my ride"   

Just ribbing you man 

[Bones]

Ohh yeah, your question....

You really don't want to rivet metal over areas you cut out. Moisture will get in between the two layers of metal and eat it right back out again.

I would pick up an old car door or something el cheapo and practice welding and general body repair on stuff that doesn't matter.

[paigeoliver]

Well, if riveting is bad I guess I can just weld it sloppy, or pay someone else to. I don't wanna spend $1000 on it, I just wanted to cover up the rust, and have the thing resprayed the lighter of the two greys on there, or should I do the darker one?

[Bones]

I don't think that riveting in itself is actually a bad thing, it is more the overlap of metal required that I would be concerned about.

Stingray will be around this way in about 3 hours, after seeing his before pic of the Mini I am sure he will offer some good solid advice.

[paigeoliver]

I am actually fairly good with the old bondo. Years ago I shaved EVERYTHING on my old Dodge D-50 with bondo and it held up for the 3 years I had it afterwards (bed seams, factory taillights, tailgate handle, trim holes, etc).

But this rust is way beyond bondo and I have no welding skills at all, unless you count spot welding in 8th grade metal shop.

[Stingray]

Okay, this is an area where I do consider myself to be something of an expert. I've rebuilt a lot of rusty, nasty old cars. To start off with, do not rivet the panels in place. If you do that I'm, going to have to drive up to St. Louis and kick you in the butt. You might as well stuff $217 down the garbage disposal. Also a word of warning, those JC Whitney panels are going to fit like socks on a chicken, but this is hardly a show car so I assume you're okay with that.

Do not overlap metal. I'll say that again, because it's important. Do not overlap metal. You're just inviting rust in to stay if you do that. You want to butt your new panel right up against the good part of the old one.

This is the correct way to remove & replace a welded on body panel. These pictures are of a '76 Triumph Spitfire that's one of my ongoing projects. Totally different car, but the process is the same. Also, in this example, I'm using a full panel and it sounds like you're using half or partial panels, which will be more work. I'll get into that part later.

Step 1: Remove the old panel.



In this picture, I used an air chisel to cut off as much as I could in one go. I doubt you have one, but you could make do with a dremel (work a little at a time and let it cool down so you don't overheat it's little motor), or you could even use tin snips if you're manlier and more macho than myself. In your case if you're using partial panels, lay the new panel on the old one before you start cutting and use it as a guide to draw a chalk or sharpie line on the old panel so you know where to stop cutting.

Step two: Locate and drill out all of the spot welds.



You've probably never done this before so it will take you a long time to find them all. You'll think you found them all, the thing still won't turn loose and you'll find some more. Repeat until you find all of them.

Step three: Remove what's left of the old panel.



It won't just fall off. There will be much cursing and fighting and cutting and grinding. This is a good time to get a tetanus shot if you haven't had one recently. Seriously.

More in a minute.

-S

[ChadTower]

Get something acrylic and spray the snot out of the rust?

[Stingray]

Step four: Clean up.

Don't have a picture for this step, but I don't really need one. To weld one piece of metal to another both need to be as clean as possible. I use an air powered grinder for this. You could use an electric grinder or even an electric drill with a grinding disk or a wire wheel. The object is to make every square inch of steel that will be welded as clean and shiny as possible.

Step five: Try to make sure it doesn't rust again.

Go buy some POR-15 or Rust Bullet. There are other products on the market too, but I've only ever used those two. What it does is converts rust to a hard black crusty looking substance. The goal here is to cover any rust on the inside of your existing panel to prevent it from spreading and rusting through again. They all have slightly different proceedures for using them, so follow the directions for whichever product you use.

Step six: Re-weld the spot welds.

Drill holes in your new panels in more or less the same places where they were on the old ones. Don't worry about trying to line the holes up, it doesn't matter. Clamp the new panel up where the old panel was. Line it up as best you can. Like I said, your JC Whitney panels will fit like crap, but do the best you can with them. Welding spot welds is easy. Just fill the holes you drilled with molten metal. Bones' suggestion was a good one. Get a scrap and practice until you feel confident.

More to come.

-S

[Stingray]

Step Seven: Welding the patch panel to the old panel

At this point you should have something similar to this:



The grey area is the new panel, the red area is where it will need to be welded to the existing panel.

Now the problem is that if you weld it in one continuous line, the heat from the welder will just warp the poo-poo out out of both panels, and you'll have one seriously screwed up looking repair. Here's the trick.



What you want to do is weld about an inch and a half or two inches, then skip the same distance, then repeat. Give it enough time to cool completely, then go back and fill in the blanks.

Step 8: Clean up your welds.

Even if you're good at welding, you still need to grind your welds down until they are flush with the panels. Again, do a little at a time then let it cool to avoid warping.

Step 9: Bondo

You say you already know how to do this, so go ahead and do it. By the way, the Bondo brand filler is crap. Buy some good stuff at a place that sells automotive paint supplies.

Step 10: Primer and paint.

Now doesn't that look nice?

Rust repair sucks. It isn't easy, it isn't fast, and it isn't fun. But if you take the time to do it right, at least you won't have to do it again.

And you guys thought I was a slacker.

-S

[Stingray]

Get something acrylic and spray the snot out of the rust?  Seal that stuff up water tight and it can't spread... maybe?

A good idea in theory. In practice it doesn't work.

-S

[ChadTower]

So rust is self sustaining once it can't get any more water/salt onto it?

[Stingray]

So rust is self sustaining once it can't get any more water/salt onto it?

Honestly I don't know a thing about the chemistry involved. I only know what I've seen in (wow, this makes me feel old) about 20 years of on again-off again body repair. I've seen a lot of half assed repair jobs on rust. None of them hold for long. My theory is that once the rust gets going it needs very little moisture to keep it going. I think that the very small amount of moisture that is sealed in with the rust is enough for it to eat back through, allowing more moisture in. Again, this is just a guess as to why it happens, all I know for sure is that it does happen.

-S

[paigeoliver]

Yes, all the panels I am getting are partial panels.

BUT, I will be able to hide most of the seams under that black body trim, with the exception of the new wheel arches, which will take a lot more prep time before painting.

Oh, and thank you for those detailed instructions.

[Stingray]

Oh, and thank you for those detailed instructions.

You bet. Let us know how it goes.

-S

[paigeoliver]

It will be a little while, since one of the panels can't ship until the 16th. So it will probably be january when I do it.

[Zakk]

Chad rust is like a cancer.  If you don't get it all, it WILL return.  Sayf you had one bit of rusty metal, and you ground it down until it was shiny, but you left tiny miniscule pinhole rust pits.  You prime it, paint it, clearcoat...all sealed up nice and airtight right?

I'd give it a year, maybe two. 

One other thing I know: Rust paint on rust does not work.  Never has, never will, it just makes people feel like they are doing something.

[Crazy Cooter]

Once rust starts it does have to be removed completely.  I've spent many hours spinning a drill bit by hand to clean out pits on panels that can't (or are to difficult for me) to replace.  Sounds like Zakk has seen exactly what I'm talking about.

Once rust is in place, just air can promote it.  The moisture in the air is enough to keep the rust spot growing.  For the small pits, the moisture already contained in the rust itself will make the rust expand and blow out your repair... leading to more rust.

My seat fell through the floor on my old Pick-up and I had to trim out a HUGE part of the floor to remove all the rust.  I was able to use rivets there because I used undercoating (top and bottom) instead of paint.  Usually I weld, grind, (fill weld holes & regrind ), fill, sand, (refill & resand ), prime, sand, paint, sand, clear, buff.  The biggest thing is not warping the metal when welding.  Follow Stingray's advice and you should be fine.  Take you time with it because warping will make everything else 1000x harder.

[Stingray]

Follow Stingray's advice and you should be fine.

This could very well be the first time those words have ever been put together in that order in the entire history of the English language.

-S

[skippy]

I've used both POR-15 and rustbullet and I like rustbullet better.  That stuff is awesome.  I thought the claims on the website were just utter b.s. but I have to say it seems to work.  I have a couple of things that have been coated for over a year and the rust has not reappeared.


Glad to see you back Paige.  Was getting kinda boring in here just talking about Steph's mom.  Now we can start making fun of scooter's again, HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY

[MaximRecoil]

I know for a fact that a repair done with rivets can last at least 10 years in Maine (if you know of a place that can rust out a vehicle faster than Maine I'd like to hear of it) without rusting. By '82, my father's '76 Chevy pickup needed major bodywork due to rust of course (6 years for a brand new vehicle to rust out around the door lips, rocker panels, floorboards, wheel openings, cab corners, etc). The repairs were done with pre-made repair panels and sheet metal, and of course, rivets.

Dad got rid of the truck in '92 and everything was still solid at the time.

It is all in the preparation and finishing work. That riveted repairs will rust out quickly is most certainly not a "rule". The same guy that did the work on my father's truck has done rust repair on several vehicles of mine since the early 90's (always with rivets) and the repairs have always outlasted the vehicle. For example, my '83 Ford F100 -- it was one of my first vehicles that I bought in '93 for $550, only 60,000 someodd miles on it and had spent most of its life in Florida. Now this was a 10 year old vehicle and already the floorboards on both the driver and passenger side where they meet up with the doorjam/rocker panel area were rusted out from front to back so that you could clearly see the ground from inside the cab. Both cab corners were rusted out too.

I took it to Dave (the guy that worked on my father's truck in '82) and had him fix it as quickly, cheaply, and ugly as possible. After cutting out the rust, he patched up the floorboards and fabricated some cab corners from sheet metal he had lying around, smoothed the cab corners out with Bondo and left the floorboard repairs in their raw riveted state and then sprayed all the repairs down with some heavy black stuff (don't know what it was exactly). I had my concerns about riveting as opposed to welding at the time and that's when Dave gave me the details on how he had repaired my father's truck. I had driven my father's truck daily for a couple of years before he got rid of it and I never knew that the floor boards, rocker panels and cab corners had ever been repaired at all. They looked solid and original to me. I had known that it'd had body work in '82 (I was 7 at the time) but I didn't know the extent of it. The math was simple, i.e. rivets + 10 years in Maine + still completely solid = "Rivets will do just fine on my truck, Dave"

When the truck died on me (well, the carburetor went and I didn't want to deal with it) in 2001, those repairs were still 100% solid.

Theory doesn't trump real world results; ever.

[Stingray]

Theory? I've been doing auto body repair for 20 years. I know what I'm talking about.

-S

[DrewKaree]

And you guys thought I was a slacker.

-S

Nah, I'm starting to get the notion that you're a go-getter PTOOEY!

[Stingray]

And you guys thought I was a slacker.

-S

Nah, I'm starting to get the notion that you're a go-getter PTOOEY!

Probably wouldn't do me any good to tell you that I spent the weekend cutting firewood.

-S

[ChadTower]

I know for a fact that a repair done with rivets can last at least 10 years in Maine (if you know of a place that can rust out a vehicle faster than Maine I'd like to hear of it) without rusting.

Nova Scotia could rust out stainless steel.

Massachusetts, starting at about 60 miles inland, seems pretty bad too, but that is because they dump ridiculous amounts of salt on the roads.  You can TASTE the salt even just walking down the street there is so much in the air sometimes.

[DrewKaree]

Probably wouldn't do me any good to tell you that I spent the weekend cutting firewood.

-S

Probably didn't even think about using a log-splitter either

[Stingray]

Probably wouldn't do me any good to tell you that I spent the weekend cutting firewood.

-S

Probably didn't even think about using a log-splitter either

Those are for little girls and homosexuals. NTTAWWT

-S

[ChadTower]

Somehow I have always been retarded when it comes to splitting logs.  Spent my whole life up to 20 mastering tennis rackets, baseball bats, and hockey sticks... but put that axe in my hand and ask me to swing down and I have a spasm or something.  The last time I tried I only grazed the log and slammed the axe into my shin... only a bruise, but the concept of cutting my own leg off with an axe pretty much soiled my trousers.  I went and sat down for a while.

[Stingray]

Okay, I'll be honest here and confess that the stuff I was cutting up wasn't really thick enough to need to be split. Well, maybe some of it was, but I decided to give that part a miss anyway.

-S

[whammoed]

Somehow I have always been retarded when it comes to splitting logs.

[Stingray]

It's only a flesh wound.

-S

[ChadTower]

Heh... it was just the side of the blade that hit my shin after bouncing off the log, thank god... close enough, though, that I had one of life's "I almost became an amputee" moments of mental shock.

[Ed_McCarron]

The last time I tried I only grazed the log and slammed the axe into my shin...

Get two nail kegs or other small barrels.
Place on ground ~ 2 feet apart.
Place log between barrels.
Stand in barrels (1 leg/barrel) and chop away.
Try not to let anyone take pictures of you.

[nostrebor]

In Chicago there are some guys who just give away buckets of concrete that you put your feet in. I always wondered what those were for.

Chad, you need to get some of those!

[ChadTower]

Damn, there I am, in someone else's metadata again.

It won't be long before every BYOAC member has me referenced in their sig, title, or user comment.

[Ed_McCarron]

In Chicago there are some guys who just give away buckets of concrete that you put your feet in. I always wondered what those were for.

Chad, you need to get some of those!

Doesn't that usually involve getting tossed into a body of water after the feet are in the concrete?

[Stingray]

In Chicago there are some guys who just give away buckets of concrete that you put your feet in. I always wondered what those were for.

Chad, you need to get some of those!

Doesn't that usually involve getting tossed into a body of water after the feet are in the concrete?

I'm pretty sure that's what the implication was.

-S

[ChadTower]

If it were funnier we could forgive his insult.

Alas, there was no humor, so we are going to have to request that he stick that butterknife in the outlet again.

[paigeoliver]

Well the parts started coming in today. I recieved packages 3 and 4 (of 4), while I am sure the other two are sitting on the wrong fedex truck because the troglodyte who shipped them somehow decided that the zip code that I put in for shipping was wrong and instead substituted my billing address zip code.