Ok, a while back I noticed some rust spots forming on my driver side rear wheel well. So I picked up some patch paint from Autozone, ground it down with a wire wheel and painted it over. It looked OK.

A few days later, the rust came back through.

My immediate reaction was that I forgot clearcoat. So I went back to autozone (because at this point I was out of patch paint). They didn't have my truck's color, so I picked up a can of dark blue generic body paint (went with spraypaint as I knew I'd be priming it anyway). The intent was to stop the rust until I could scrape the $ to get it done professionally.

Ground it down to the metal again, made sure to get a nice shiny surface. Sucked it in and primed it. Waited a bit. Then I painted it. Dark blue is apparently lighter then royal blue, but it wasn't too bad. Waited for it to dry, then clearcoated it. Didn't look great, but at least it would stop the rust, right?

WRONG

Not even a week later and the rust is coming through the paint. Either I did something horribly wrong or the rust is coming from the INNER side of the body.

So now I have a big ugly spot on the side of my truck with rust spots poking through. It makes me sick to look at it and I've lost any drive to do anything else with the truck for now.

I'll get pictures tomorrow of the damage.

So a new question arises. I believe I saw a ranger with what looked like plastic trim on the rear wheel wells. IF I can get the paint fixed, maybe I could bore out the offending metal, seal it up and put those over it?

 

Wow, things have been busy. Between looking for a house, visiting my friend back from Korea for a week (crew chief in the Air Force), and the job, I just haven't had time to dig into it.

Until tonight. I went out on a limb and bought a can of spraypaint from http://www.automotivetouchup.com/ . Yeah, it's a stretch, but that blue spot is driving me crazy. And I'm saving as much as I can for a house payment so I can't get it into a body shop any time soon.

Why do I have a feeling that this is just going to get worse. I'll try for pics tomorrow after work.

 

yeah.. Rust is teh fuxking devil

 

KBS has some good products for rust control. I've used their tank repair and Rustseal before with good results.

KBS

.

 

As promised, here is my mark of shame. The big light blue spot was a futile attempt at getting the rust under control and trying to blend the paint at the same time.



And here's the stuff that caused all of this...

 

ever think of fender flares off of an edge maybe? an then just grind down that paint and then prime the hell out of it...


or you could try to bondo the area then paint

 

Well, I repainted it last weekend. (Would have posted sooner but it's been one heck of a week). Wire-wheeled down to the metal, sanded with 220 grit, primed with rust converter, sanded lightly with some 2000 grit, applied the paint, sanded again very lightly with more 2000 grit, then applied the clear coat. Here are the results:


(Bad pic, yes, but parking lots suck)

Looks pretty good for a do-it-yourself job. You can't tell where it was repainted when it isn't clean. When it's clean... you can tell what has that high-gloss finish and where I painted. Not sure if that can be fixed or not. I may end up just saving up and taking it in anyway. I'm not a paint guy... I just need something to get me through the winter. Hopefully next spring, I'll get it professionally done, get it detailed and the windows tinted. It should feel like a new truck!

 

Well at that angle it looks good...lol.