Rust Prevention for the roof and sides of the car
Related:
Floor Pan Rust Treatment can be found here, or under the Photos Menu – Inside the Car – Floor Pan Rust Treatment
Background:
The sides I refer to here are the inner sides behind the front seats where the rear seat is located. Of course you cant see the sides because they are behind a metal plate that covers the window winder mechanism and the and also makes it look nice. The side panels were removed pretty easily with the rear seat and back taken out the way. The sides were left with a glue that had dried and was used to stick a membrane across it by the looks of it. Of course that has long since gone from my car, but it needs cleaning of and treated ready for the put back together.
Process:
Sides:
Remove the rear seats which is an easy job as they are just hooked into some metal latches. Once exposed the sides shows the dried glue for the membrane which scrapped of very easily and almost flacked off in fact. There was a some old sealer or filler that was in place that I removed at the same time as the floor pan treatment. A clean up of the area using the POR Marine Clean degreased and allowed to dry. The POR Patch is a seam sealer and can not be filed down, and is used for out of the way places that you are not going to see, such as these seams behind the side panels. where the old filler was used I replaced with the Patch and allowed it to dry.
Panels:
The metal panels are not interchangeable obviously and the backs of the panels have sound proofing felt attached to them. The front faces are scuffed up and will need to be sprayed up and look pristine again. The felt on the back is almost falling off and once started to lift up it came off easily. Both panels are very solid with only slight surface rust on the front faces where the seat has been lifted over them.
Update: 09/02/2014
Clean up:
This was going to be messy, very messy indeed. Not only that it was going to hurt having to work with my hands above my head all the time. The first issue was going to be how to get the Waxoyl off the roof. It also didn’t look pretty in there.
I tried many things that would scrap the wax off, first there was a plastic divider for a took box – too soft, pallet knife – too small, rags – clogged up. but what did work was a very old and has seen better days. It was my old filling knife I use for decorating. It was just bendable enough to go with the contours of the roof without digging into it. It was also blunt enough not to dig into the metal either. So the technique was to press firmly and take the layer of in lumps as much as possible.
The only downside was that the shavings that were coming off were pure wax and got everywhere. The process was very effective and can be seen where I have done only half the roof.
The other downside was the rubbish that fell into my hair, neck and every place I cared to mention. There were old towels I had put down to take the worst of it which helped but I can’t help thinking there should have been more.
Once the roof was scraped the floor cleaned I had to degrease it. This was going to be by far the most important part. I used the POR Marine Clean diluted on a 1:1 basis and it done the trick. I used the old carpet cut into squares to agitate the surface. The nylon was just enough to remove the worst of it, then dry it, then go over again with clothes until I could not feel anymore. Getting into the folds of the roof was a challenge to say the least and the pallet knife wrapped with the carpet also worked well. The whole thing took ages and the end result was you couldn’t see any difference except it wasn’t as shiny.
While I allowed the roof to dry I also removed any of the wax on the side rear pillars and cleaned them up as well. These were going to be treated slightly differently as they showed more signs of surface rust than the roof did.
For the treatment of the roof I used a spray that was more of a barrier than a treatment. This was a large can 500ml but it was only enough for the roof with two light coatings with ten minutes apart as the instructions said.
I started from the back towards the front. and the drying can be seen by the darker sections. First Coat:
The spraying of the second coat was much nicer and coverage was very good and very even.
Once the coats had dried except for a few tiny patches it came up almost a white/grey colour which put some colour back into the car.
The Sides:
Firstly the rust was treated with the Granville Rust Cure for the exposed rust places where it was a little flaky near the bottom by the rear shelf. Once that had dried I then got some Eastwoods Rust Encapsulator and sprayed into the gaps behind the sides and then the outside. While I was at it there was not enough to go round the sills at the top of the roof, so I decided to treat those as well. The roof was protected from overspray (well most of it anyway), by a bit of old card. This worked well and gives a nice contrast although it will be covered by a headliner and nobody will see it anyway!
Once the spraying had been completed the results were quite good and almost too good to cover up.
When I get nearer the time I will treat the inside of the rear quarters. I am not sure just how much will need to be cut out at his point so I will wait and see.