So I've decided to confront a few rust bubbles on my car, before painting it (the car looked great, but I never liked the wavy sides due to poor prep and no blocking).

If you can't stomach this first photo, please don't continue...

pete

That came from here...

Where?

Let me Guess ...Sails

Crap, I can't size some of the photos down small enough easily. But you guessed it on the sail panel. I'll load what I can now, do the rest later.

This is the left rear corner, has been bothering me for 17 years now (since the car was last painted)! Note the "RUST?" marking. Perhaps I was expecting the Easter Bunny?

pete

Other sail panel....

Two pinholes + the factory hole for the trim strip.

pete

Two more pinholes in the right front fender, apparently the result of a small hole from rust in the cowl gutter, which allowed moisture into this area where you cannot get to otherwise. Short of taking off the fender, we are still thinking about the best plan of attack.

One is to drill holes in the wheelwell near this area, get a better look (possibly with a boroscope), try our best to neutralize the rust, then seal the cowl gutter up.

REALLY do not want to remove the fender, though I know it is the "best" way to go....

pete

There's a wrong way to fill in the U.S. sidemarkers, which is what the last guy did.

Tacked a metal square in place, then DENTED the fender in, and Bondo'd over the area...

pete

And then there's a right way to do it...

pete

Sorry for the sideways jpgs.... don't mean to make you dizzy.

They are right side up in the files!?!

Last small enough photo for now...

Taking the chance to get rid of the antenna.

I don't think so.

It looks... well... like a 914. I count two paint jobs since factory. Are you sanding those off? You did start the "Should we ALWAYS go down to bare metal?" thread.

Looks like FUN!

When you start to get discouraged be happy your not the owner of this car.

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=80655

You've started on the journey... no turning back now.

Paint shop will make the final decision on what to do from here. The rest of the car looks very, very good.

And, yes, I know looks can be deceiving.

The shop working on it now is a race shop at the end of the street with a good metalworker. I am listening to him carefully. My guess is the paint shop, when it gets the car, will sand down to the last fill-coat, which is pretty thick. But maybe they'll tell me they want to take it down to metal. We'll see. As it's being painted in SF, I am not crazy about down to metal...

The car was last painted in 1991. I thought that was the only time in the booth, but it looks like it was painted once before that. Besides four trouble spots, the 1991 paint has held up very, VERY well. Too bad the guy didn't block the sides...

Right now, I'm leaning towards sanding it down to the fill coat and repainting it once more.

But we'll see.

pete

WOW!

pete

I don't know how much truth there is to this, but I have been told not to use a sharpie pen on the paint or metal on the car. My painter told me that he has seen cases where the ink bleeds through the new paint..

Okay, so that is scary...

pete

Yes it will if you paint over it. Make sure it's sanded off thoroughly.

BTW Pete, if you didn't already know, the first three pics with the pin holes are where the factory put their 'seam sealer' underneath. After many years, the seam sealer shrank and/or cracked and the water began seeping into those areas.

Good luck on the refinishing and painting, keep us informed...

-- Rob

Pete,
Make sure that your shop does a thorough search for rust. I thought my '70/4 was pretty nice, but the ravages of time, salty winter roads and latent moisture ultimately caused more damage than was readily apparent.

Paul

Dude... someone vandalized your car with a majik-marker!!

Hey Paul,

I saw your pics a while back and they inspired me to get going sooner than later. And now they've inspired me to pull my aluminum threshold plates. I was relieved, however, to find no rust evident on the longs, at the bottom of the firewall on the passenger side. I'm an Optima battery customer since 1991, and one who is happier than ever to have made the switch...

Your pics also serve as a good cautionary tale for rust in general... Let me ask you this: Was the rust on the back of the sail panel evident when you stripped the vinyl away? What about elsewhere? Did you have a couple bubbles here and there and decided to fix them? Or did you strip to metal and only then find the issues?

Thanks,

pete

Pete,
Although the vinyl sail panel had no blistering or lifting/loosening of material and seemed to be solid, once it was removed, it was apparent the extent of the rust damage far exceed the 3 or 4 very small paint blisters that had appeared in almost the exact same place as shown in your photo on post #5 of this thread. I'd decided to address the rust issues on the pan of the car, never imagining the extent of the metal degradation on many parts of the exterior sheetmetal.
Here presented (again) were some surprising rust issues that were uncovered when the paint was removed.

I was expecting to see "Remember to pick up milk from the store" on a fender.

Actually, it reminded me of how plastic surgeons mark up a patient in pre-op. Smart, because sometimes it's difficult communicating with body
shops and paint folks. Or sometimes you forget exactly were the wavey (that you can only see under certain lighting) was.

Good luck with everything Pete! Thanks for sharing.

Jen

Hey Jenny, long time no see!

Here's the result of six hours of disassembly, plus continuing rust repairs and metal work...

pete

'nuther

"I *am* a Porsche reflector" holes removed...

and, while we're at it, antenna be gone...

...

but by far the worst damage is this.... I wish I'd got after this sooner (first spotted it festering in the 1990s) but I am glad I didn't let it go much longer...

After melting the factory gunk (it is TOUGH stuff, unlike the foam by the taillights), the patch will go in place...

engine lid in trunk, ready to go to paint shop...

given what I've seen on a lot of 914s, I went into this gig pretty scared. So far, it's not so bad. Longitudinals seem to be VERY solid, the firewall is good, and we're not finding indications of rust anywhere else. But I'll be going over the car VERY carefully before sending it to paint.

For now, that's all. Front trunk seal gutter is pretty good, with just two TINY holes at the top corners. I think I'll kill the rust, prep them, and then make sure to seal them off well with the new trunk seal.

Re-sealing the areas where repairs have been done are scaring me a bit, however....

pete

Mines time is coming one day. There are severalareas infected with subutanious scars on the verge of breaking fourth in an alien-like explosion, too gruesome to describe

Yours will be purt'-near perfect for a good while now, I thnk.

What color is your car Pete? I really like it.

Thanks. Car is VW/Audi Toronado Red, I believe late 1980s/early 1990s spec, important to figure out because colors of the same name from the same car company can change over time. Ever looked at a perfect Guards Red 911 SC and a Guards Red Boxster side by side?

I'm going to have to find out the code, but the last person who painted it won't be painting it again and may get proprietary about it as he'll probably be offended someone else is painting it this time. In fairness, his paint had VERY good adhesion. Nothing lifted in 17 years and it seems like the body was very well sealed.

Anyway, if he won't give me the code, I am sure I can have the paint shop match it.

Car was originally Bahia Red, but I picked this red in 1991 because the painter suggested it would go well with all the black and chrome elements. It's more similar to Porsche's old Polo Red or Signal Red, very non-orangey and with a lot of blue in it. Very pure red. He's an Alfa guy, and picked this red after shooting cards with 29 different reds. 17 years later, he says he's only found one red he likes better than this one.

But, now that I'm on this whole "turn back the clock" thing, I am seriously considering shooting the car in Bahia again. Only trouble is, I'm not sure I love it. If memory serves, it's a little brown for a bright red. A cool color, in its way, but I am not sure I dig it.

Anyone have input on this? Anyone local to SF repaint a car in Bahia lately? I'd sure like to look at one...

pete

I too am a bit of a back to original purist. But some Bahia cars look a bit pink to my eye. The Audi red (I think it is Toronado) on the later cars turns my head whenever I see one. I especially like it on the Audi cabrios. Your car appears to be the same color. Hard call. It would keep me awake at night trying to decide.

you will have to remove *ALL* of the foam in that cavity! on both sides!

the reason why it's rusted there is that the foam is sealed off but will get brittle after 30 years and soak in water which will have ample time to do it's rusty work.

you'll have to scrape out all the foam on both sides and treat the cavity with metal ready (or similar) and then seal it off with something like por-15 ...

Andy

I agree with everything Andy had to say with the exception of the POR-15. I won't be using that on anything else. Stick with a good quality epoxy primer and you will be happier in the long run.

Keep that Toranado red - it looks great on your car.

a pair wearing Bahia Red......

Thanks very much for posting that!!! I gotta find more pics of Bahia... time to do a search.

But, of course, trying to judge a real red on a computer screen is like...

pete

I've owned both colors these shots were taken with the same camera, but different years... Both cars were orig paint, 911 "mostly" original/

My Bahia 73.5 T

Click to view attachment

And my Toronado Red GTI

Click to view attachment


Pete, PM me you email, and I'll send you both gallery's of each car.


Ferg

Another sample of Bahia Red... I had this car painted at a local paint shop last year, using DuPont single stage acrylic-enamel... so my recommendation is original paint.



-- Rob

So some progress has been made...

First up are better pics of the deletion of the rear reflector holes and the antenna hole.

pete

Next up... the targa bar and LR fender by the taillight.

Here's where things get interesting.

After scraping all the foam and rubberized sealer out of the LR fender corner as seen above, I can show you the first photo below, as seen from the wheelwell. You can just make out the black rectangular patch in there, as well as the rest of the surface rust hiding out in there, stewing with the foam.

In the next photo, you can see the same area on the right fender. When I initially poked through the rubber and then the foam, I saw the nice gray metal you see in there, and way angry because I felt that I had broken into a sealed area that wasn't broke.

But then I removed the rest of the foam and the rubber and saw HOW the left side failed, and how the right side would have failed. The foam, once dry enough, wicks moisture up the vertical surface of the taillight housing's outer edge, inside, behind the rubber. The left side rust-through was the result of this process, and it had started to do the same on the right side...

Please learn from my experience. This is a California car (always), rarely driven in rain the last 10-15 years, and almost always garaged over its life...

Clean those corners out, and re-rustproof and seal them!!! It ain't fun, and it took me about 9 hours for both fenders (at the front and the back of each), but that gunk needs to come out...

pete

The two pinholes in the right front fender filled...

BUT, here's where the bummers begin.

Same area, as seen from the doorjamb. Sorry for the crappy angle. It's hard to shoot in there, and it will be even harder to weld in there.

Our plan at this poiint is to rid the area of the rust, gain access to the back of the metal that had the pinholes (easy because of the rust!) and then (probably) epoxy over the area once we've converted and encapsulated the rust.

It makes me cringe...

Looking good Pete! Glad to see the seam sealer gone. You're right that this is a major PITA and is completely necessary. This is especially important for those people who are media blasting their cars (soda, dry-ice included) because the blasting won't touch that stuff.

I stopped using canned primer/paint over my metal work because I had a few experiences where the rattle can paint didn't interact well with the final paint and caused bubbling. Now I figure a little surface rust comes off in two seconds with some 80 grit sandpaper, so why bother painting.

I agree with the epoxy fix for the door jamb area. Everyone hates on epoxy/body filler/fiberglass and raves about welding, but sometimes it's just NOT worth the hassle when somethine else will work fine.

While we were in there syndrome set in, so I decided to have John weld in an Engman kit and lower my driver's seat, as he figured, much to my surprise, that we can get 0.75-1.00-inch out of the height. As I have a VERY long torso (most of my 6 feet, 3 inches), this was very appealing to me.

I decided to give the go-ahead.

And that's when the real fun with rust began....