Rust Slowdown

2023-04-30

Slowing down how quickly my car is rusting

 back home

I drive a 1988 Honda Prelude. I'm not certain of it's history, but I do know it spent a long time on Bribie island and in turn has gotten pretty rusty. Looking back on some photos from when I bought it, there was a good chunk on the rear passenger quarter already rusting, which I have left for two years, and now looks terrible. Here I'll document how I """fix""" it.

The Problem

Rust

We have some pretty bad rust patches on the rear passenger quarter (below the fuel door),

and a patch on the bonnet where the paint chipped up in a heavy storm,

The Solution

n.b. I did the following process for the rear quarter and bonnet but only will show pics of the quarter.

Started by sanding down to bare metal with 120 and 220 grit sandpaper,

Then paint with (a lot of) rust converter and wait about 30 minutes to dry.

Finally, mask and paint. Did about 4 coats of paint.

The Result

Yeah, look, it's not great, but it is better than having metal exposed to the air, and in all fairness is better than when I bought it (2.5 years ago...). Needs a lot more work but this will do for the meantime, and I can get back to commuting.

Retrospective

Realistically, in the future I should/will need to:

  1. strip back way more paint in case (pretty sure I am) missing rust
  2. rust convert a few layers
  3. bondo/body filler
  4. sand smooth
  5. more body filler
  6. sand smooth
  7. primer
  8. sand
  9. paint
  10. wet sand
  11. polish, wax, ceramic coat seal, etc etc

but that is looking like a solid long-weekend/holiday project, rather than one afternoon and one morning.

Bonus

Also, while the car was in the garage already for the paint to dry, I thought I'd try adjusting my door - it never quite closed properly.

To adjust the door position, I need to adjust the hinges. To get to the hinges, I need to remove the front quarter. To remove the quarter, I need to remove the bumper. To remove the bumper, I need to remove the plastic skid tray thing. In short, my "30 minute fix" turned in to dismantling half the car.

But it worked! I had to jack up the door (literally - used a car jack) to have it sit slightly higher than the door latch, so when it would sag under it's own weight, it would actually close properly.