Rust Repair/Paint Job
 

Hey guys I need a little help here please.. i would like my car painted however i am having a bit of a problem finding a place that is willing to do the at a reasonable price. The reason for this is i have a few rust stains on my roof, near hooded area, and my back trunk. Would it be possible to do a quick fix at home to repair the rust damage since most of the body n paint shops seem to have a problem with it. :(

Any recommendations? thanks

Wow man you also could use a new t-top. :p Anyway I am sure you can fix the rust. I would also like to know, what I can use to get rid of the small spots on my Z. Most of the rust is under the battery. But it is also under the hood, and a couple of other small spots. Maybe you could try sandpaper to get the rust off, and then bondo the hole by your rear wiper. Just a thought, I am not much of a body man. Would like to learn more about it though. Anyway still a nice Z, for it's age. Pretty clean nonetheless. Good luck to you man! :D

First thing you need to do is strip all the paint, primer and rust off the affected areas.

Then you can figure out if you just need to smooth it with bondo and seal it with primer or if you need to cut out the spots that have rusted all the way through and weld in new metal.

If you have to weld in new metal and you can't do it yourself, it's gonna cost you.

What do you consider a 'reasonable' price?

Maaco or Earl Scheib will gladly paint over the rust for no additional cost. But it'll just start to bubble again in a few months and the mere act of trapping whatever moisture was in the rust already will greatly accelerate the process.

You MUST completely erradicate the rust or it'll come back to haunt you later.

There's nothing worse than ruining a brand new paint job because you missed a small rust spot.

The shops that won't do it are shops that I wouldn't do business with anyway.

Sounds like underskilled & underpayed "body professionals" if you ask me. Take lww's advice and stay away from any shop that say sit CAN'T do something. Anything should be possible if YOUR wallet is fat enough and if a company is willing to say they can't do it then you're better off not trusting their skills with any other part of your car. Oh and don't use sand paper unless you've got nothing better to do. Use a grinder with a soft touch to make quick work of any rust or paint you need to remove. Sand paper won't get rid of any pits in the metal the rust may have formed either. A grinder will take care of all that. You can then use a welder or leader if you can still find them and fill in any neccessary parts that you didn't grind all the way through. If you had to cut out entire peices then take the above advice and have some panel welded in.

Thanks everybody for the advice, so how do i strip all the paint out? after stripping the paint i just sand out or grind out the rust spots then bondo the rust then sand over the bondo to smooth it out then cover it with primer... am i going on the right track?? haha and yes jfairladyz i have lots of time.. about the new metal? what are you talking about lww? the metal that is connected to my windshield??

the body shops that i went looked pretty good from there service but they asked too much.. when i think about it.. the first body shop asked $10,000 for cleaning rust and repainting the whole car in 1 day so i just left haha the second body shop said that he doesnt know how to clean the rust and keeps saying that its like "cancer" haha the third bodyshop asked $4000 and told me most the problems of my car which he was actually honest not like the other body shops that i went to.. asking $10k? hahaha thinks im rich n shit

everything sounds good except for one thing, and I don't know if this was a typo or not but DO NOT BONDO OVER THE RUST. You can however bondo over the areas where you removed the rust. But I don't recommend bondo at all unless you absolutely can't get it right without it. :D Filling with a metal filler is a far supperior method and yes, they make soldering kits for those who are welding impaired for filling in metal.

the best quickie way to do it is track down a good auto body supply place on get some SEM Rust Mort to kill the rust, and then use USC All Metal body filler. It is incredibly hard and has a lot of metal in it

That cowl piece comes off the car, right? If that's the case, I might have a replacement part for you. I"ll check my parts car tomorrow, but from what I can remember, it's still rust-free.

-Dave-O

If you haven't done body work before I strongly suggest you find a body man. Most people can do the simple rust removal, but from your pictures you seem to have a great deal of rust where the metal meets the windshield. Because of that to do a good job the crome trim on the windshield will have to be removed, and if you don't know what your doing you could have a problem. We removed our trim to do only a small patch of rust and found it went all the way down behind the trim. If your just planning to keep the car for a few years and don't care you can treat the rust without the crome removal, but the rust will come back later. Good Luck

Check the link for some good old useful info on what you should expect when tackling a home jobber.

http://www.carcraft.com/howto/24820/