Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

POR-15; is this a dirty word?

Rusty metal has always been the bane of the automotive restorer. Especially the amateur home restorer. It has always required special equipment and techniques to address it. Either cut it out and replace the metal or patch it with "some kind" of material. Over the years fiberglass, bondo and chicken wire, and finally epoxy putties and coatings have become available. There was a thread on the HAMB where guys that had bought cars that were painted and looked to be in decent shape found inches of bondo slathered over tin foil, chicken wire, and even balled up newspapers! When the new owners decided to fix the cracking paint or to make some additional modifications they found that their cars fenders, doors, and rocker panels were just a mass of plastic filler.

Yuck!

Chip away at cracked Bondo at your own peril.

It is easy to condemn the people that repaired these cars in such a shoddy manner, but the reality is that the repairs were performed when these cars were virtually worthless, and nobody thought that they would be around twenty or thirty years later. The idea was to get a few more years of service out of them.

Large areas of surface rust must be dealt with effectively or the new coats of paint won't stick properly and the rust will continue and bubble up to the surface.

My Mark VII has large areas of surface rust and a couple of areas of rust through that must be dealt with. There is a process where the entire car body can be dipped in a tank of chemicals that will dissolve away all paint, filler, and rust, leaving clean metal that can be repaired. This would be the preferred choice if money was no object, and a complete restoration of a vehicle was going to be pursued.

photo source: metal dipping .com
This would a pleasure to work on, clean bare metal!

The entire car would have to be stripped to a shell and transported to a facility for the process. There are only a limited number of facilities located in the U.S. Would I spend this kind of money on a 900.00 Mark VII? Of course not.

But of course I have a plan. And it's a cheapskate approved plan!

I intend to sand off the surface rust on the roof hood and decklid with an electric palm sander that I bought at Harbor Freight Tools, I even bought the one year replacement service plan. I recall a poster on the HAMB who said that he he had burned out two of these sanding down his car, with a free replacement on both!

Just what the Dr. ordered.

Then I will use the whole POR 15 system. The cleaner /degreaser followed by their Metal Prep. This way the products should work well together. Then I will apply a coat of POR rust encapsulating paint, followed by some high build primer. This process will stop further corrosion and protect the metal until I can get the car painted.

This is a high quality, metal infused body filler. I intend to use this as well as POR 15 epoxy putty. Regular old Bondo will soak up moisture like a sponge creating an ample opportunity to create an unseen rusty mess.


If the paint was only worn through to the primer in some areas and had small patches of surface rust I might consider retaining the "patina" though this just too much of a good thing!

Surface rust covers the top of the hood.

The car is now in my yard, but it doesn't look any better.

I initially started writing this post almost a year ago, well before I moved the  car into the sideyard. This winter of 2019 has been a real gully washer. Today there was torrential scattered rain and even a hailstorm. Luckily hail in the Bay Area is "rice crispy" sized, not walnut sized. It's entertaining but won't cause any damage to cars that are parked outside. I am glad that the State has received enough rain to technically end the drought, but it is messy and cuts down on working on the cars in the driveway.

Time to focus on my other projects. The Mark will have to wait it's turn.

I'm very happy that my XJS is sitting safe, snug, and dry in the garage. I still have to order the replacement suspension arm bushings before I can get to work. Since I have a copy of the factory repair manual I'll study up on the procedure before I will jack up the car and take a look underneath.

The time for talking is over. Time to crawl around on the garage floor.