Treating Rusted Body Panels

When repairing rust-damaged body panels on your beloved automobile, be sure to remove all possible traces of rust. Rust can be effectively removed by abrasive blasting, chemicals, mechanically removing it (sanding it off), or by cutting out the rust and replacing it with new metal. In some instances, it simply is not feasible to completely remove the rust. For those instances, you will need to use a product such as Eastwood Rust Converter and/or Eastwood Rust Encapsulator. Both products do a great job at preventing rust from spreading and getting worse.

When treating a rusty body panel with Rust Converter and/or Rust Encapsulator, be sure to treat the rust from both sides. Many times body panels rust from the inside out. It doesn't matter how good the rust product you used is—if you only use it on the outside of the panel and do nothing to protect the inside of the panel, the rust inside will continue to spread.

NOTE: In places where you cannot adequately prep the inside of the panel for Rust Converter or Rust Encapsulator, Eastwood's Heavy-Duty Anti-Rust is a great product to use with your spray gun.

Here is a picture of a panel that had some rust perforation on the outside

This panel did not look too bad from the outside. In fact, it looked like the rust could have been cut out and then small, metal patches welded in. As this panel had some other body damage, instead of making little repair patches for the rust perforation, it was decided to use a lower quarter panel replacement. This allowed for repair of the rust and body damage with one panel. After the damaged panel was cut out, it was found that the inside of the panel was severely rusted (thanks to a mouse nest).

Here is the backside of the panel (notice the heavy rust damage that was not apparent from the outside)

Had the little bit of rust on the outside of the panel only been repaired and treated, the panel would have continued to rust from the inside. This rust would have shown up through the new paint job in a short amount of time and destroyed the panel.

When dealing with rust, what you see is often only a glimpse of the rust that is hiding in areas you are unable to see. To effectively stop rust, it's critical to treat the rust that you can and cannot see.