touch up paint

I think you posted the wrong pics. Not a car in sight there.

You didn't see the first pic which is the headlight? It should be there but the question still remains the same with or without the pic. As a follow up, can I use some of the rust convertor type paints that turn the rust to black followed by a white spray laquer to try to make the spot match the car color?

Oh, yes, now I saw it. It got lost among the other pics. Unfortunately though, I can't help you there.

just go straight for the rustoleum. wire brush the loose flaky paint and rust, then generously rustoleum. you need to leave it for about 6 weeks before contemplating any additional paint after you've done it - not because it needs to dry, but because it needs to do its conversion thing.

"Doug" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Rustoleum is useless against rust, so forget that. It's unfortunate that this was left until rust formed. Unless you remove ALL the rust before painting, it will bubble up eventually.

Converters only work if ALL the rust is converted from red Fe2O3 to black Fe3O4. If ANY red stuff is left underneath the black (a near-certainty), the rust WILL come back, worse than ever. You will need to remove the headlight so you can get at the bare steel and rust that's under the fender lip. You will need to sand back the rough edges of the wound to gain access to the rust that's formed under the broken edges of the paint. All this means dramatically increasing the area of bare steel that you'd need to prime and paint.

Before painting, you need to use ZINC primer over the bare steel, and enough coats of paint that oxygen is completely excluded from the metal. That's not easy at all, especially with rattle-can paints. Zinc primer is usually a silvery gray these days. It's getting hard to find the yellow stuff, which is better quality.

Possibly a more practical thing you can try is POR-15, a black epoxy whose claim to fame is oxygen-exclusion. The idea is that any oxygen remaining under the epoxy will bind with the steel, causing a little more rust, but there the corrosion will stop for lack of additional free-oxygen. POR-15 is painted directly over top of the bare steel and rust, and it's paintable with any color coat. You'll still need to remove the headlight to do this job properly.

Any way you tackle this, it will be an ugly repair. If it were me, and I intended to keep the car, I'd let a professional bodyshop fix this. It would cost roughly $1,000, assuming no bent metal to straighten.

A lot to swallow but I appreciate the information. I have to decide first how long I want to keep her first then apply the appropriate fix :( . Thank you.

After all that, you can't help me ? Ok, no big deal. At least you confirmed the headlight pic is there. Regards.

Appreciate the info. I like your way for ease of application and if I don't keep the car that long, this will be the way I go but if I keep it longer, I may use Tegger's way or somewhere in between. Thanks again.

??? tegger, with respect, you're completely wrong on that. you need to wire bush loose flaky material, and loose paint, but other than that, rustoleum works great and with a good deal less effort than traditional methods. if [perhaps] you mean that it doesn't protect against perforation, then you'd be correct - but only if you'd painted one side and let it rust through from the other.

if red has been converted to black, then how does red figure into it???

back when /i/ lived in the rust belt, i had an old p.o.s. rust bucket and did an experiment. one side of the vehicle i wire brushed, rustoleumed, and left alone. the other side, i cleaned, primered, and "protected" in the traditional way you describe.

two years later, one side was completely rusted out, the other was pretty much as i'd left it. it was the rustoleum side that survived.

bottom line, you're pissing in the knowledge pool. if the guy wants to protect the vehicle for another few years for minimum outlay of time and money, there is a very good effective and practical solution that you're dismissing out of hand, and that's wrong.

yeah, and i've seen people spend thousands at bodyshops too - only to have the thing rust through again in a couple of years - the old metal they'd not replaced continued to rust. unless you go to extremes, like full strip, acid bathe and full immersion dipping, you're just playing whack-a-mole. much better to do it cheaply and with minimum effort, especially if using something halfway effective to help you.

Jim, it's hard to argue with experience . One concern I also have is whether I can paint with rustoleum and later (6 weeks) follow up with a white laquer spray? I ask because rustoleum is an enamel from what I have seen and some sites say not to pay laquer on enamel while other sites say no problem. Not sure which is correct for a car.

"Doug" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

What area of the country do you live in?

Texas

Got it.... thanks.

"Doug" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I should have asked originally. My mind is so conditioned to the north-east (where I live) that I forget about the south.

If untreated, your rust will still spread, but not nearly as fast as it would up here. Probably the easiest solution for you is POR-15. With POR-15 you can leave any rust in place. Scrape away any loose paint flakes so that the remaining paint is sound, then brush-paint over the bare areas with POR-15, overlapping the sound paint a bit. After that, apply your color coat with whatever brush/spray paint you feel like using. The paint is just for decoration; the POR-15 will be doing all the work.

You'll still need to remove the headlight to make sure you cover up all the bare steel.

Texas is a big place and there are areas subject to the rust belt like the gulf coast and the northwest part of the state that has a similar winter climate as that in southern New England.

Houston, Armrillo etc. can produce some pretty good rust...

JT