RMW underbody rust. Anyone else encountered this?

Here's the back story...

On the prowl for a clean RWM under 100K for quite some time.
One shows up, locally, for $3400. Hooray, saves me a trip to Timbuktu and a big drive back in a car I don't yet trust.

It has 89K and apparently sat garaged for quite some time. There's a service receipt from 2002 that has the mileage listed at 82K, so its only done 7K in the past 9 years. It is a very clean car. The body is immaculate, 100% rust free but there's some rust in the engine compartment and the underside is an absolute bucket. Strangest thing ever. Some of the frame is to the point of scaling.

Whatever, I rolled the dice and bought it.

Just ordered a case of rust reformer, which I'll prime the underbody and components with, them probably coat it with POR15. Using Eastwood internal frame coating for the internal frame stuff.

Questions are:

1) Has anyone else encountered this, as far as a pristine frame with a very rusty underbody?
2) Has anyone done a rust treatment on these or any other vehicle and might have some tips?

Don't use POR, its junk. I would suggest SEM Rust Shield. Works much better than POR and is UV safe. Undercoating the frame is easy I did it last summer.

As for a step by step, its really easy. First I took a 3M rust/paint wheel and buzzed the floorpans and frame down to get all the crusty/ flaky stuff off everywhere I could. You dont need to get it to shiny clean metal, just smooth. If you really want to go all out, a coat of two of primer would do good too. Then start apply whatever undercoat you go with. Heres a thread on another forum about using the SEM product:

http://badass-of-ne.forumotion.com/t2978-the-non-por-15-stuff

Yeah, they put it away wet and salty OR it sat in high humidity and no ventilation and that's why it's rusty.

I've used POR 15 and had good luck. In fact I did several items and spilled a few drops on the driveway. Almost 4 years later the drops are still on the driveway. And the items I did still look good.

SEM is also a good product, I would have no problem using that.

Tom C.

Well, next Saturday's the big day- got the lift reserved.

Here's the process I'm going for.

1) Blow out any debris w/ air

2) Prep the underside w/wire hand brush. This one will be a colossal PITA. Someone whose opinion I value says if you're going to use a pneumatic wire brush, then you're basically "all in" and committed to taking the whole underbody down to bare metal, since rust reformer products actually need rust to adhere properly... so, I'll be using a wire brush to knock off the scaling and smooth out some of the rustier surfaces.
3) Blow off any rusty dust create during prep, go over everything with a soft bench brush to get anything the air missed.
4) Spray everything rusted/prepped on the underbody with Rust Reformer.
5) Heat gun same to initiate a faster drying action.
6) Park for 24 hours
7) (sometime next week) Topcoat with POR15, SEM Rust Shield or Rust Bullet (haven't yet decided) and do the internal frame coating as best as the existing holes will allow me, without having to drill.

Since finding the Eastwood stuff, its hard to use anything else. Other than their original chassis black, everything I have bought from them has worked. (note: they did refund my money for that and they assured me the new stuff is 100 times better).

They do sell the PQR but their inhouse, high ceramic stuff sounds good.

http://www.eastwood.com/rust-solutions.html

Bill

Use the wire wheel on a grinder, not a drill.

I'm not using any power. Hand brush only.
The primer I'm using requires some rust to chemically convert and adhere properly. Power is just too aggressive and takes it down to bare metal too quickly, which would cause adherence problems.

Wagon wrote:

I'm not using any power. Hand brush only.
The primer I'm using requires some rust to chemically convert and adhere properly. Power is just too aggressive and takes it down to bare metal too quickly, which would cause adherence problems.

You are going to be there for a VERY long time. Heck it took me like 2 hours just to do like 3/4 of the car with a wire wheel on an air grinder. A drill or air grinder will not cause "adhesion" problems if you use the right undercoats. The only thing it'll be is quicker and more thorough.

I agree with Cadet about using a brush on a high speed power tool.You are going to be under there for a long time doing it by hand.I am sure you will change your mind once you get the
wagon on the lift.
Guys,I can almost hear him now "Holy shhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiii thats a big frame!
Jim




Good workout for your arms though!

Cadet57 wrote:

Wagon wrote:

I'm not using any power. Hand brush only.
The primer I'm using requires some rust to chemically convert and adhere properly. Power is just too aggressive and takes it down to bare metal too quickly, which would cause adherence problems.

You are going to be there for a VERY long time. Heck it took me like 2 hours just to do like 3/4 of the car with a wire wheel on an air grinder. A drill or air grinder will not cause "adhesion" problems if you use the right undercoats. The only thing it'll be is quicker and more thorough.

Hahaha. Adhesion, not adherence. Oops.

You sure Rust Reformer is still good after powering off the rust with air?
Believe me dude, I'd MUCH rather use air here, but I got spooked away from it when someone told me it won't adhere unless there's a membrane of rust... But I'm totally open to that guy being wrong and changing my mind.

Wagon wrote:

Cadet57 wrote:

Wagon wrote:

I'm not using any power. Hand brush only.
The primer I'm using requires some rust to chemically convert and adhere properly. Power is just too aggressive and takes it down to bare metal too quickly, which would cause adherence problems.

You are going to be there for a VERY long time. Heck it took me like 2 hours just to do like 3/4 of the car with a wire wheel on an air grinder. A drill or air grinder will not cause "adhesion" problems if you use the right undercoats. The only thing it'll be is quicker and more thorough.

Hahaha. Adhesion, not adherence. Oops.

You sure Rust Reformer is still good after powering off the rust with air?
Believe me dude, I'd MUCH rather use air here, but I got spooked away from it when someone told me it won't adhere unless there's a membrane of rust... But I'm totally open to that guy being wrong and changing my mind.

Why do you need to use rust reformer? If you're buzzing all the crap off to clean metal you wont need to use it since there won't be any rust ro "reform". If you do what I suggested, you'll be fine. Buzz the frame/floorpans/whatever else you want down to smooth metal, its ok if its a bit brown it does not have to be 100% shiny. Give a coat or two of rusty metal primer then put on whatever undercoat you want and you won't have a problem...

Cadet57 wrote:

Why do you need to use rust reformer? If you're buzzing all the crap off to clean metal you wont need to use it since there won't be any rust ro "reform". If you do what I suggested, you'll be fine. Buzz the frame/floorpans/whatever else you want down to smooth metal, its ok if its a bit brown it does not have to be 100% shiny. Give a coat or two of rusty metal primer then put on whatever undercoat you want and you won't have a problem...

My access to lift time is limited. If it's only a 2 hour job to wire it off, then I'll give it a go.

As an aside, I notice in your siggy about the dead RMW that left a piece of the frame in your driveway.
Was that a failure from rust?

Wagon wrote:

As an aside, I notice in your siggy about the dead RMW that left a piece of the frame in your driveway.
Was that a failure from rust?

Yes, only because it had 229K and the owner never once undercoated it.

Cadet57 wrote:

Wagon wrote:

As an aside, I notice in your siggy about the dead RMW that left a piece of the frame in your driveway.
Was that a failure from rust?

Yes, only because it had 229K and the owner never once undercoated it.

Ugh... Mine is a 1992, and hasn't been undercoated, and is rusting.

Now you have me worried that I should just dump this damn thing.

Wagon wrote:

Cadet57 wrote:

Wagon wrote:

As an aside, I notice in your siggy about the dead RMW that left a piece of the frame in your driveway.
Was that a failure from rust?

Yes, only because it had 229K and the owner never once undercoated it.

Ugh... Mine is a 1992, and hasn't been undercoated, and is rusting.

Now you have me worried that I should just dump this damn thing.

Trust me. I doubt yours has anything close to the rust this thing had. Just relax, wire wheel it, paint it and you'll be fine.

Cadet57 wrote:

Wagon wrote:

Cadet57 wrote:

Wagon wrote:

As an aside, I notice in your siggy about the dead RMW that left a piece of the frame in your driveway.
Was that a failure from rust?

Yes, only because it had 229K and the owner never once undercoated it.

Ugh... Mine is a 1992, and hasn't been undercoated, and is rusting.

Now you have me worried that I should just dump this damn thing.

Trust me. I doubt yours has anything close to the rust this thing had. Just relax, wire wheel it, paint it and you'll be fine.

I dunno man. It's pretty rusty. I'm going to head out the door right now and see if I can't get some decent pics of the underbody without having to ramp or jack it.

Stay tuned...

Edit.

the floors don't look too bad. Neither do the frame rails. That should buzz down ok. As long as the frame doesn't have any holes, etc you'll be good.

No holes yet.
OK, *takes a deep breath*, I'm definitely going with pnuematic/wire on this. I'll take pics along the way...

Thanks for your help. More to come, once I get 'er on the lift.

Just went outside and started hitting some sections with a wire hand brush to get an idea what I was in for...

Much to my relief, once that nasty scale got scrubbed off in a few spots, beneath the cancer lied...

*drumroll*

... a frame.

It appears to be early stage cancer, but definitely curable cancer.
Hooray. Man, I was sweating it (and still kinda am, but no where near as bad as I was 20 minutes ago )

Sounds kinda like my '94 Caprice. The body on that was pretty good for the most part; the drivers rear quarter was rusted out, but the floor pans were solid, and the rest of the body had no rust in places where my Custom Cruiser has rust, yet the Caprice had a horrible looking underside (think sunken ship wreck) and the OCC's underside looked great. The frame was solid all around, but scaly in most places (but out by the rockers had factory paint still on it) The guy in CT I bought it from said he purchased it 100% rust free in 2005 (with 39k miles!) but only used it for a winter car, and apparently never thought to have it washed! I've lived up that way for 10 years and I never saw a car look like that underneath, you'd have thought it was from upstate NY or something. Keep us updated on how it goes, maybe do some before and after pics.