Need a good plan of attack, Keeping rust at bay until I can kill it Options

[rjames]

Since I don't have welding equipment (yet) not to mention the fact that I haven't learned how to weld (will be taking a class in a few months), I'm wondering what the best approach is to deal with my car's rust issues.

There is a dime size hole in the trunk along with some surface rust in there as well.

I also have a couple of spots in the floorbaord behind the driver seat that has rusted all the way through. The inner longs look ok at first glance, haven't been able to remove the rocker panels yet to look at the outer longs due to a few nasty bolts (the ones on the underside of the panels) that have decided not to budge. Going to have to drill them out at some point.

My question is this: Should I go ahead and remove all of the tar off of the floor panels, remove the undercoating, grind all of the rust out BEFORE learning how to weld?

While the car is garaged, it is Seattle after all and fairly humid (read raining nonstop) and I don't want to get all of the rust off just to have exposed metal start rusting. Yet not doing anything of course is allowing the rust to continue to eat away at the good stuff.

Should I remove all of the rust, por15 the areas that I'm not going to weld to protect them, and then use some kind of mild rust inhibitor to treat the areas that I am going to weld later on? The idea being that I'll need clean exposed metal to weld to, and maybe I'll be able to use something (a torch?) to clean the areas that were treated with the milder rust inhibitor before welding? Or should I just wait to do anything for 5-6 months or so when I might have enough skills to attempt some welding? (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/confused24.gif)

[bd1308]

if you use metal-ready, you can weld on that. it converts rust to an oxide better than iron oxide (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/smile.gif)

b

[Rand]

My approach was/is... get all the crap out of there sooner than later. Carpets, tar, foam, engine pad, etc., etc.... anything that traps moisture.

Clean it up, seal it up with your favorite prep and rust killing paint.

When it comes time to weld, you can always take a grinder/wire wheel to the small strips that are going to take a welding bead.