I got tired of looking at the flaking bondo patches on my car yesterday so I started looking at the problem area more closely. Until I get the money to buy new fenders or patch pieces I will apply the POR15 products to help slow down the disintigration.

Here's what I found so far:

I'm not sure if it looks worse or better than I though before I started.

The bad:

the ugly:

can anyone say rear clip:

Maybe a new chassis would be better... and this is just the first of three I want to work on:

Can someone tell me why there was a pound of SAND inside the sail area?

Sand was prolly from the PO sandblasting the rust. That stuff goes everywhere and you can't get it all out. Hit a bump and it migrates.

Ask Sor Ahndie about sand cascading out of his car fpr years.

Now you know why I hate Bondo. Most of that stuff is porous and absorbs water. Every time I grind it off , I find rust. Some types are not porous. Evercoat used to sell one.

Have me one of those John Kelley shrinking disks now so I can shrink the stretched metal. Then I will need no bondo.

Tried it on a bumper. I'm freeking amazed as to what it can do.

Ken

So far, I can't figure out what could have been blasted. As far as I can tell, the yellow paint below is original. There is a black primer on the car the the stripper didn't touch. Below that is a bit of plastic pitty and shiney metal.

As I'm just trying to slow the rust right now, I may leave the black (factory??) primer where I can. The plan for now is to use the POR15 system including the epoxy putty to convert and seal up the cancer them prime and paint with some cheepo stuff untill I can either pay to have the rust taken off or replace the whole bloody thing. Yeah, I know it's not the right way, but for now, it's what I can afford. The main reason for this thread is to have a record of the damage I'm causing. That way if I get fed up and sell the car, no one can say I was trying to hide anything.

I keep thinking of a guy around here that bought a 914 against my reccomendation. He brought it to my house and I cought greif from my family because his car looked all shiney and pretty while mine looked rough. A week later his car broke in half while being lifted.

I did some late night (read dark) scraping of the longs and found ZERO rust so far. I'm so very happy!

David,
This is my suggestion: Do whatever you can to improve the appearance of the car and to slow/stop the rust from growing behind your work. That means not driving when it is wet out and always storing the car indoors. It may also mean a dehumidifier in the garage during the humid months.
Plan on replacing all 4 fenders completely when you have osme $$ for restoration. While the fenders are removed at that time any perforated interior panels can be patched.

Ok, I haven't seen anything too bad yet. Don't go tearing up your car. Do one panel at a time. Your car is red, and non metallic, which means you could finish off a whole panel and even shoot color on it and it would still be acceptable to look at, until you painted the whole car.

I think you could repair that rust using ad hoc patch panels. For body filler, I have been using this stuff my Marson called Platinum Body Filler. The jobber recommended it as it does not absorb water, and finishes very well. Then use 2K primer, block it real good. It will take a lot of time, but you really want to focus on one area at a time. That way it doesn't overwelm you. If you have any questions about body work, I am going down this road right now, let me know.

I hate to say it but the only way to stop rust is to cut it out or totally remove it with a sandblaster, wire cup, grinder, or whatever. Knock off all loose rust and don't be shy about taking off too much rust. If the rust is in bubbles, it bulges up and forms a pit in the metal underneath the bubble. You want to remove the bubbles (easy to do) and wire brush as far as possible into the pits. The more you remove, the less problems later. I 've even been known to use a spring loaded punch in the rust cell to shock and break up the rust in the pits. Use Ospho or a rust converter to convert the rust in the pits- that's the rust galvanic cell. Treat the surface of the bubble and the cell is still active. Rust bubbles have a bad habit of swelling under any coating and cracking the coating so knock them down to the pits and treat.

Years ago I bought one of those cheepie mapp/propane/oxygen rigs and used braze to tack in patch panels. Used a drill with a sander and a long wood handled wire brush on the rust. The oxygen tanks are $7 and last 15 miniutes so operation isn't cheap. But, you can do a good patch that will last much longer than the bondo/epoxy fix. At that time, it was the best bang for the buck and I got really good at it. Radio Shack used to sell a small inexpensive metal nibbler that works on hand power. It would work great on cutting some of that rust.

The things you learn as a poor college student living on the beach in Florida. Ever seen what salt air does to fine German steel?

Ken



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QUOTE (Racer Chris @ Aug 7 2005, 09:37 AM)

David, This is my suggestion: Do whatever you can to improve the appearance of the car and to slow/stop the rust from growing behind your work. That means not driving when it is wet out and always storing the car indoors. It may also mean a dehumidifier in the garage during the humid months. Plan on replacing all 4 fenders completely when you have osme $$ for restoration. While the fenders are removed at that time any perforated interior panels can be patched.

Yup, that's the plan. The rear panel looks pretty bad too. Looks like a repair gone bad as it's detaching from the car.