Every car has a story, and if this one could talk. My theory is that the previous owner was having trouble with the electric windows and couldn't get the driver's window up. It must have rained really hard and filled the floorboard with water. It's been a while since I've done rust repair this bad.

When I removed the carpet, this was the horror I saw:


So I started the rust dissolving process.



It's starting to work it's magic:


Looking much better already. Next I dissolved the rust to the right of the wires:


For now, I sprayed on a rust converter to kill any remaining rust and to seal the metal:


Now I need to decide on my next step. Either hire a body shop to weld in a new floor panel, which will be quite expensive. Or I can carefully fiberglass it, which I've done in the past with great success.

 

You should work on a car from the rust belt! Thats nothing!

 

Maybe you should consider multiple layers of fiberglass mat and POR or equivalent. I think that would work very adequately.

 

I was thinking the same.. Did you get it fixed?

 

Yes, I applied blue tape to the underneath to support the resin, then cut out small fiberglass "patches" to cover each hole. They were small enough, so I just patched each hole individually. Once the resin dried, I removed the blue tape from underneath and painted it. It's hard to tell any work was done at all. It came out really nice.

 

The chemist in me has to respond here.

The Titanic has not and is not rusting. Rust is iron oxide, and it comes from the reaction of iron with oxygen. There is no oxygen in the water at the bottom of the ocean.

The Titanic IS decaying, but it's not the process that our car fenders and frames undergo. Rather, it involves the metals being eaten by microbes that live at that depth. The process results in the production of what have been called "rusticles," which look like rust but are actually growths from the microbes that look like icicles.

The Titanic has been at the bottom of the ocean for over 110 years now and has significantly decayed. They figure it will be completely eaten up by the microbes in another few decades.


Now back to our regularly scheduled thread...

 

 

This is rust

 

Floor rust?