Given all the advances in technology and chemistry...
I would like to ask a real question...looking for valid pointers, links, pricing, experience.

Price is always a concern, but leave it off the table for this....even if its crazy, I would like to learn about it.

I do NOT have time to do this, so it would be subbed out.
I will not be building a container large enough to dip a whole car...
I would like to find a place to do this.

Take a stripped tub, or in reality, a stripped VW pan.

Can I send it somewhere to make it rust proof...
Galvanized, electro-coating...whatever...

I don't know what can be done, and I would like to consider this option.

We built a beetle for my son in high school and it lasted (northeast DD) about 6 years before the rust kicked in again.

A "new" heater channel just disintegrated over that period of time.
It rusted from the inside out.

The one nice part of a beetle is the paper mufflers in the heater system are removable, so the body is all metal and the pan is all metal.

If it gets dipped, the solution would be getting inside the heater channels to hopefully prevent it from happening again.

I would like to redo the car for my son, his wedding/child coming up.
It wont be a DD again, but it wont be stored indoors either.

So, any ideas to strip, dip, coat, whatever to apply new cool technology to a round two restoration that would make it last 20 years or so...instead of 6?

rich

Does anyone remember the guy who posted about some home brew concoction he made. He dipped a piece of steel in it then hung it on a pier and let the sea water have at it. It still looked brand new after his test. IRRC, it wasn't anything you could paint over though.

did you dip it last time...? I know alot of the race 914's that got dipped have that issue..

Do a search on youtube for Dave Ailey, he uses molasses to eliminate rust. 9 parts water to 1 part molasses.

He will soak the car part in the slurry in a shaded area, covered for a week. If the parts still not done soak for another week. After done he washes the part off with a pressure washer and uses the metal ready. I think it's the same product that por15 uses, zinc content?

He is using a large container, water trough for cows?

Don't know how u treat any hidden areas such as your heater channels.

Dave

One more thing, once the solution is mixed only good for 6 months.

Dave

The easiest way is for Restoration Design to build a new body. love our Canadian Friends!!

Redi-coat.com

I regularly see a flat bed tractor trailer with some huge metal fabrications that have been hot dip galvanized, much larger than a 914 body. Think two story stair cases for outdoors in tough environments. I imagine it would be tough to paint afterwards. Unless you went with a Sheridan body kit over top.

There's some Amish guys about 45 min outside Philly that have a tank big enough. Lost their contact info though...

The new body would still need to be protected. No?

Hmm. Well, there's rust removal and there's rust prevention. The two aren't usually accomplished by the same chemicals since they involve very different chemical processes.

Rust removal, chemically speaking, is the removal of iron oxide from steel (in the applicable case). Many acids will do that, but care has to be taken not to remove too much of the steel along with it. The POR-15 treatment which we used for the bottom of my tub uses has a pretreatment step with phosphoric acid I believe it was - of course that's after all the chunky cancer is removed, then the small stuff, then the surface stuff you can get to ... then after the acid wash, there's the rinsing and cleaning it off. THEN you apply the POR-15 which is for rust prevention.

Electrochemical methods will remove rust perfectly, but have some problems with them too - expensive, dirty/messy to clean up and dispose of waste, and somewhat hazardous with the hydrogen generation issue. They might use this with "dip" treatments, but I think those are mostly acid baths.

Rust "proofing" or more accurately rust prevention/mitigation is different. It would seem to me that the best way of truly preventing corrosion is to carry around a sacrificial anode (think a large magnesium block or the like, with a continuous ground pathway), but for many reasons, not the least of which is the attendant weight penalty, that would not be desirable. So coating the metal with something seems to work best. EDIT: By the way, all galvanizing consists of is exactly this - coating the steel with a sacrificial anode that also helps prevent physical access to the steel/iron from acidic water. Painting over the galvanized coating usually seems to help prevent rust for longer time periods, or just more mitigation. How to coat hard-to-get-to spots are, well, hard to do. Nothing is rust-proof forever if there's water with dissolved ions in it, which is to say all rain water, sea water, lake water ... water. Suffice to say unless it's purified reverse-osmosis/deionized water, which rain/salty road water/oceans/lakes most definitely are not, rust is inevitable. All we can do is try to slow it down.

It just seems to me to be the only ways that make sense. I'd be wary of other methods. Whether molasses works or not is something I'm not willing (or need) to try, but eh... maybe there's something acidic in molasses.

I have not personally tried the molasses trick but would like to. Check these out...

http://www.hotrodders.com/forum/rust-remov...ses-204391.html

http://www.homercidal.com/molasses/

Conflicting info on pot metal though. One says doesn't affect it the other says it does. It is mentioned though that you need to degrease the parts prior to the molasses dip.

Dave

Why not just get it galvanized? It's worked with cars for the past 40 years.

Rich,

Sorry to hear your bug rusted after repair. That's a lot of work ruined. I had a similar experience with a 914 right after college. A lot of welding.....4 years later as a daily driver it was toast. While the 914 was drivable and rusting I was working on my '66 beetle. It was way rustler than most people would fix, but my grandpa bought it new and it was our family car and auto crosser when I was a kid, so I decided to fix it. I was also flying model airplanes and one of the guys at the field, Pete, had a 356. There was also occasionally a guy who repaired rust on ships. We talked rust.......a lot. Here's what I learned.

As you learned rust comes from the inside. It starts at seams. Spot welded seams, which cars are full of, are hard to rust proof. You need a liquid to seep in. You have to protect the inside of all those complex tubes ona 914 and a beetle. All the undercoat in the world won't help that. Here's what I do now

All inner panels and spot weld seams get covered with Zinc rich primer. Eastwood makes owned you can brush so you done have to setup a spray gun. It's a pain. Wear a respirator. Once you have the panel fitted and ready to weld I clean the weld area with wire brush. The zinc will mess up the weld. Even cleaned it affects it some.

When done get one of those sprayers with the long attachments so you can spray the inside. Eastwood has these too. First I use oxisolve from Eastwood. This penetrates the spot weld seams. You will use a lot. It will leak out. It's a mess.

Once that dries use the same sprayer and spray in some kind of wax based sealant. Eastowod has one. Ifts too thick thin with mineral spirits. Use plenty. Plan on re spraying every 5-10 years.

For really rust prone areas, like rockers, I use the favorite rust inhibitor of our ship repairing flying buddy, crankcase oil. You don't want it leaking out all over. Just enough to keep the inside of the rocker damp. I also use oil in the tunnel on my beetle bc I know it is rusty.

The result? I drove my beetle every winter from '97 to 2010. That car is as solid as the day it left the factory. I got another 914 and did the same work. No rust work since 1999. I did do an Engman long kit on it. I guess the inner long was rusted thinner than I thought and years of auto crossing made it split. Other than that I drive 914 everyday march-November. No issues.

Good luck.

Kelly

http://redi-coat.com/pricing.html is the only link on that site I could get to come up.

Rick told me about it, so I did a bit of research. THAT would have been a lot easier way for me to do what I did. They dip the car, rinse the car, then dip it in an epoxy-like primer that gets in every nook/cranny. You basically get a rustproofed car tub back.

The good thing about our parts is that they are made from Galvanneal. So if we were to make VW parts, they would also use the Galvanneal. They do not have to be coated with anything else as the rust prohibiter is within the steel.

So if and when we make a body in white, it won't be an issue ever again!

I am going to assume that all rust/metal work should be done prior to this process?
Does not seem to have a middle step to replace anything the acid may find for rust???

I recall Rick did the mercedes, but only after he did all the metal work..

Seems like a good idea, and certainly worth the 4k it would cost me....shipping and all...

I need to see if anyone local to me is doing this, would help reduce the cost.

rich

I had my Land Rover frame, bulkhead and other parts hot-dip galvanized at a place just outside of Boston. $500 for up to 1000lbs. I painted the bulkhead with a two-part epoxy primer and then a singlestage topcoat and it's held up fine. The only downside is the surface is far from smooth that a 914 would require.

Click to view attachment

cool

Got an address?

BTW...good to see you still hanging around the funny farm.

rich

Duncan Galvanizing

Thank you very much.
I will be doing this for the new beetle build.
If it works out as I suspect, the 914 will be next....

Rich

IMHO, galvanizing a Rover and/beetle frame/platform is a good approach - because of its "open" structure.

The 914 tub has too many uni-body type cavities that will fill and be trapped. Adding a lot of wait to the body.

I think e-dipping would be the best approach.

I powder coated my car body primer grey immediately after it was media blasted. Seems to have worked like a champ. A real biatch to sand back thru when doing metal repair (I was told), but I think worth the investment.

Molasses is a chelating agent, basically it reacts with oxides to pull the oxygen from the iron oxide effectively converting it back to unrusted metal. its not like its solid metal it forms, its kinda powdery. Its not acidic, and wont actually react with the iron metal itself. basically it will remove all the iron oxide leaving you with pure iron on the outside. which is why you need to protect the metal as soon as you take it out of the molasses. I generally use molasses, followed by a pressure wash, then an ospho bath.

The best thing is once you're done you can spray it on your lawn or gardens. its a pretty decent trace mineral fertiliser

It only works with ferrous metals though, DONT use it on pot metal or pretty much anything other can cast iron and steel.