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Leaving Car In Bare Metal

3K views 17 replies 11 participants last post by  Klutch 
#1 ·
I am hoping based on experience, people can help me with a bet. My 66 Coupe needs to be stripped and it is winter up here in Northern Ohio. A friend of mine has a heated pole barn, he keeps it heated to 50F or warmer all winter. He says I can keep my car there to work on it and says I should strip the paint and wait until spring to epoxy prime. I told him there is no way you can leave a car in bare metal all winter and then spray in the spring without rust forming. He says not big deal, just DA down with some 320 and shoot the epoxy primer. Who is correct? Can a car sit that long in bare metal with just a light scuffing prior to primer????
 
#2 ·
I'd hit it with Picklex20... I've left metal bare throughout the winter without flash rusting... but remember that our winters here are dry... 15-20% rH when it's darn cold outside. If the humidity is higher you might want to have him crank up the heat a bit and epoxy prime. You can lay it on with a roller and foam brushes and knock it down when it gets warmer.
 
#3 ·
After stripping the paint, I treated it with Ospho, kept it inside and stayed out of the weather for about a year and no rust, except where my sweat dropped on it. I'm in central Louisiana, and the RH here is about 80% or more all year long. Be aware that some epoxy's don't play well with Ospho and PickelX, so know your products prior to use..
 
#5 ·
Before you strip it, make sure you read and fully understand Barry's instruction for using Ospho on the SPI forum. Just wondering, how were you planning on stripping it? If it being stripped in your friend's barn, what about building a temporary spray booth around your car and putting something in it for some extra heat and just spray it with epoxy and be done with it? When you do strip it, I'd DA it with 80 grit to get a real good bite for the epoxy primer.
 
#7 ·
Just wondering, how were you planning on stripping it? If it being stripped in your friend's barn, what about building a temporary spray booth around your car and putting something in it for some extra heat and just spray it with epoxy and be done with it?
I plan to strip with paint stripper, I attempted to sand the paint off last fall with Eastwood Stripping Discs and 80 Grit sandpaper... both gummed up with paint very quickly. I can tell the paint is an enamel type, it must not have been catalyzed. I have used both those discs and 80 grit on other projects and the paint flied off the panels.

I cannot explain, I offered to do just what you said and build a booth. For some reason he does not want any paintwork done in his heated pole barn... your guess is as good as mine....
 
#8 ·
Ditto ~ works fine. Any phosphoric acid based product will protect from surface rust to an extent, even more so if it has a zinc component.

SEM Rust Mort is another product that I've used, it was the final prep step before spraying primer on my '71 which had some pretty severe surface rust and pitting. It killed the rust hiding in the pits that the DA couldn't get to.

Many times you can simply scrape cheap paint off with a razor blade, lots cleaner than stripper or a DA. I helped a friend once with a car and it took us under 2 hours to get 90% of the paint off.
 
#11 ·
To the OP: until reading this thread, I would have agreed with you 100% and assumed you'd win this bet. And it looks like 4ocious does too. But I'm shocked to see how many people say it should be fine to leave the body in a metal state for a long period of time (assuming it's treated properly).

This thread is very pertinent to me right now. I have my 68 FB fully disassembled. My desire would be to media blast the car, bring it home in bare metal and continue to work it with my boys. Things like raptor liner or POR15 for the interior. Painting the engine compartment and outer aprons. Frankly, I don't have $15-20k to drop it off at a painter and have them do it all.

In reading this post, it seems like I could blast it, bring it home and continue working on the car. And at some point, it'll be ready to take it in for paint. I live in southern Cal where it's pretty warm and dry. You guys think I could proceed in this way?
 
#14 ·
To the OP: until reading this thread, I would have agreed with you 100% and assumed you'd win this bet. And it looks like 4ocious does too. But I'm shocked to see how many people say it should be fine to leave the body in a metal state for a long period of time (assuming it's treated properly).

This thread is very pertinent to me right now. I have my 68 FB fully disassembled. My desire would be to media blast the car, bring it home in bare metal and continue to work it with my boys. Things like raptor liner or POR15 for the interior. Painting the engine compartment and outer aprons. Frankly, I don't have $15-20k to drop it off at a painter and have them do it all.

In reading this post, it seems like I could blast it, bring it home and continue working on the car. And at some point, it'll be ready to take it in for paint. I live in southern Cal where it's pretty warm and dry. You guys think I could proceed in this way?
- POR 15 is for painting over rust you can't remove or don't want to remove. Nothing wrong with POR 15, but if you're media blasting your car, POR 15 isn't the right choice.

- Likely, you'd be fine in SoCal leaving the car in bare metal. Optimally I would suggest you bring the car home and spend a lot of time cleaning out the blasting media. It gets everywhere to include inside the rockers. Use a good shop vac to suck all that stuff up. Shoot compressed air into the rockers, frame rails and torque boxes. Again, you'll get a lot of media coming out. Keep doing this again and again until no more blasting media comes out.

- Once you've got all the blasting media cleaned out, spend more time wiping everything down with wax and grease remover.

- When the body shell is clean, clean, clean, shoot on two coats of epoxy primer. There are many good epoxy primers. I like SPI. (Use whatever wax and grease remover the manufacturer recommends.)

- With two coats of epoxy, your car will be fine while you do the body work. Scuff the epoxy and put the filler right over it. You can push the car outside and, if it gets dew or little rain on it, no big deal.

- I would not recommend using Raptor or any similar product on your Mustang. It's your car and you can do what you like, but I think bed liner on the bottom of the Mustang looks kinda lousy. Furthermore, if you ever sell the car, potential buyers will wonder what you're hiding under that bed liner. I would suggest you apply seam sealer over your initial two coats of epoxy then apply two more coats of epoxy. That will seal the bottom very well. You can top coat with something like chassis paint if you like, but it's not necessary for the bottom of a car.

- For the interior, consider something like Lizard Skin if you want a spray-on sound deadener. That will work much better than Raptor.

FYI, I built a rotisserie out of construction lumber when I had my Mustang as a bare shell. It allowed me to clean out all the blasting media, shoot on the epoxy and apply seam sealer to the bottom. It's in my build thread if you're interested.

Have fun!
 
#15 ·
^ Klutch, thank you for the awesome advice! The undercarriage of my car look like new. I've spent a lot of time cleaning it already. It's a San Jose car and has the original red oxide primer and I'm leaving it be. The raptor liner was my idea for the interior and the outer aprons (wheel well area). I'm not married to the idea and welcome all options.

I've heard the same thing about media blasting with it leaving particles everywhere. I'm torn because I want to take everything down to metal to have a fresh clean slate. Decisions decisions.

-Jeff
 
#18 ·
^ Klutch, thank you for the awesome advice! The undercarriage of my car look like new. I've spent a lot of time cleaning it already. It's a San Jose car and has the original red oxide primer and I'm leaving it be. The raptor liner was my idea for the interior and the outer aprons (wheel well area). I'm not married to the idea and welcome all options.

I've heard the same thing about media blasting with it leaving particles everywhere. I'm torn because I want to take everything down to metal to have a fresh clean slate. Decisions decisions.

-Jeff
I had my car media blasted. Yeah, it was a lot of cleanup, but I would definitely do it again. There's just no way I could have gotton into all those nooks and crannies with a sander, grinder, wire brush or anything else to clean out rust and other crud.
 
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