Restoration Coating Ideas

[harrisracing]

Greetings,

I have been reading on the Pelican Forums for several weeks on how to tackle the rust and metal repairs on my 77 911 restoration / hot rod project and have found many instances of personal preference or even misinformation regarding rust and metal repairs. I will not cover how to "fix" rust by some magic chemical process to pour on top of it (as that is a band-aid at best IMO)...simply REAL rust and metal repairs (as I have done on my car).

I used the 3M systems on my car and had GREAT results with them and would like to describe the process that I used.

First and foremost go to the manufacturer of your product's website and read what their products are used for and download and print ALL of the MSDS sheets that you think you will need - these are critical for safety, cleanup, application, etc - HAVE THEM ON HAND. The local body shop tried SEVERAL times to convince me to use an improper product for my application and all of this was cleared up by reading what the manufacturer recommends.

This is the process that I used for my repairs:

1) Get all areas in question back to bare metal in whatever fashion you choose.

2) Identify corroded areas and identify / repair / replace rusted metals. Get rid of ALL of the rust! Buy new metal, replace metal, whatever it takes to have some METAL there.

3) Be prepared to have a timeline of when you can do the work. Many steps require a follow up of the next product in line. Remember this stuff is made for body shops and lots are made to "burn in" to the previous layer within a certain amount of time (some even while still "tacky").

3) Sand blast or sand areas to 80-120 grit (read product for details). Get rid of ETCHING PRIMER. It does NOT work with epoxy primer, nor the seam sealer.

4) CLEAN entire area with solvent / wax & grease remover.

5) Seam seal all seams with 3M Bare metal seam sealer (08310) with the mix gun. This is some serious stuff - STRONG and yet workable. Starts off liquidy and within 15 minutes is nice and moldable. I used rubber gloves and just spread around with one hand while the other hand applied it. Fill in all gaps and seal all areas. Follow instructions. You are supposed to burn epoxy primer on top of this within 24 hours. If you don't do that, you need to scuff it all again.

6) 3M epoxy primer on the entire area. Two part mix (2:1) with a primer gun. Read instructions! You need 15 minutes AFTER you mix it before spraying for the primer to start catalyzing. This is AWESOME STUFF. You could pretty much stop here if you were just "saving" an area. I think you have 72 hours to coat this product with paint or rubberized coating before having to scuff again.

7) Apply the Rubber Coating which is 3M "No Cleanup High Coverage Body Schutz (08964)" (not offered in regular schutz gun bottle, only "no cleanup style"). Since the factory painted this part of my car (suspension pan / gas tank area) with body color after application of rubber coating I used this product. Some other undercoatings do NOT allow paint to stick on top of them!

8) Apply 3M Rust Fighter I to protect the inside of the panels. Now I see why the factory has the little flapper doors in the steel. I also see why they put some choice holes in the panels...this is to feed a 360 degree, 4 foot long spray wand inside the panels all the way to the end of the part you want to coat (inside) and you spray this stuff as you pull the wand out and it coats everything with a Paraffin (wax) coating when it dries, which is great for long term protection and sealing inside those parts where I spot-welded them shut.

9) Clean areas again (rust fighter is WAX which needs to be removed prior to painting.)

10) Apply sealers to top of flapper doors and holes to keep air / moisture from breathing in and out. I am at this step now, contemplating bitument biscuits or plastic plugs for this.

11) Clean again, scuff if needed and Paint body color - I'm not here yet

Anyway I will be adding pictures of my repairs soon enough. I think I did well enough considering this is my first restoration / repair on my own!

Thanks for looking!

Patrick Harris