"MM54" (mm54mk2)
05/19/2015 at 20:17 • Filed to: None
0
2|
"MM54" (mm54mk2)
05/19/2015 at 20:17 • Filed to: None | 0
| 2 |
My Crown Vic (2002 P71) has a lot of rust. Fortunately, most of it isn’t visible so I can pretend it isn’t a problem in my day-to-day activities. For example, I do not have rocker panels, just some trim, held on mostly by good intentions, over some spaces which used to contain metal that I’ve subsequently swept off the driveway. The main visible rust is the driver’s fender (which is totally shot, and thus I have another one in primer in the shed) and front of the wheel opening (which I’m fixing this week).
It doesn’t look all that bad, but rust being the way it is, there’s always more than meets the eye. In the fall I sanded this area down thinking it was surface rust, but I found I was very wrong so I painted it up until I would have time to sort-of-fix-it, which is now.
Removed the rocker trim/cover and masked off the door for starters. Up close you can see that this is more rot than just rust.
The rocker trim came off pretty easily, being held on by a plastic rivet which went into nothing, the doors, and good intentions. Also a couple plastic clips which aren’t really secured to anything.
Oh, remember how I said I didn’t have rocker panels?
I wasn’t kidding. Good thing I have an actual frame.
From here we broke out the soda blasting stuff, which sadly turned out to not be nearly as effective as we hoped. That said, it did do a very good job of removing the brown rust stains from the paint, and knocking the loosest of the loose paint off.
That’s the whitest any of the (factory) paint has been on this car as long as I’ve had it. I mention the “factory” part because - and this is a good tip for those of you with cars finished in Ford’s peel-off-in-sheets-tastic Performance White - you can (and I have) repaint parts of the car in Rustoleum White Automotive Enamel and it’s pretty much a perfect match. It’s also about as durable, if not more so, than the actual paint.
Anyways, with the soda blasting serving two purposes, neither of which were the intended function of removing the paint, we moved on to more traditional methods. (The two accomplished purposes were creating a nice, matte white finish on this part of the car and making the corner of the driveway look like a mirrored table on a Saturday morning in 1986.)
With enough elbow grease and a few Dremel attachments worn out, enough of the rust was removed for me to say “okay” and move on.
As mentioned earlier, this car has a lot of rust. I fully plan on replacing it this summer, once I move, start my new job, etc. That said, for the time being I want it to look at least somewhat decent, so I’ll knock out the visible rust and say “meh” to the stuff that’s hiding on internal panels, just like the rockers.
The last thing I got done today was to soak the whole area (especially inside the holes, the surface of the opening facing the tire, and the remnants of the rocker panels for S&G) with some Rust Converter. I’ve used three different types and never found them satisfactory, so I figured I’d try aerosol this time. It may or may not actually do anything.
This is how it sits now, under the Harbor Freight-branded pop-up canopy in my driveway. tomorrow I’ll sand the surface down, fill the holes with long-hair (fiberglass) filler, then normal bondo, and finish it all off. Then I’ll move on to some much-less-substantial rust on the bottom of the doors, etc.
If things go well, expect to see a post on Part 2 in the next day or two.
jkm7680
> MM54
05/19/2015 at 20:21 |
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Nice looking work so far! I’ll be looking forward to seeing that part 2!
Just make sure to give us a video of that P71 roar at some point :)
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MM54
> jkm7680
05/22/2015 at 11:59 |
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Thanks! Part 2 is here:
http://oppositelock.kinja.com/crown-vic-rust…