For a while I’ve been casting sidelong glances at the top of my a pillar. Paint there is sort of bubbling. A bit.
Try not to think about it because its so horrible. What if whole a-pillar is just a giant bar of rust? Is that a fatal problem?
Today I got out the step ladder and went at that rust bubble with a screwdriver.
I didn’t take a picture before I started but it was just blue paint that had bubbled a bit. But it was also a bit soft to the fingers. So it was paint over something that wasn’t solid.
I scratched the paint off with a flathead screwdriver, then kept scratching at all the softness, the bubbling brown rust, until I’d explored the limits of the badness.
Unfortunately the rust extended to under the windshield seal, which means I can’t fix it with the mig unless I remove the windshield.
Here is right after I started to scratch:
After I’d scratched and ground it clean, then painted with ZeroRust.
I drove the car to my local awsome glass shop. They said… um… this isn’t exactly a… ‘rotisserie restoration’… the windshield will probably break if we remove it… prolly you should put in a temp fix and do the welding when the windshield needs replacement.
Just as I got home my wife got home from her moms, she handed me a half used pack of JBWeld Steel Stick. Age Unknown…
So I tore off a chunk, worked it for a minute and then jammed it in the rust hole, pressed it way up into the hole using a screwdriver. Kept pushing until it was jammed hard with whatever epoxy that is. My goal was to press out any voids.
When I was done it looked like an old hornets nest.
Then nearby were some other small bubbles in the paint… sure enough these were hidden rust holes. I gave it the same treatment except I could grind all the metal clean with my angle grinder, cleaned the underneath as well as I could, then hosed it down with some coats of zinc paint. And then I repeated that work on 2 other rust holes.
After a few hours the zinc was dry enough to weld. Because there was no seal nearby I filled the holes with zaps from the mig welder. Then grind the welds down. Pretty nice.
The main thing is to give it two small zaps, then wait until the metal is warm to the touch. Generally a minute between zaps. This keeps the heat way down, avoids warping the metal or catching the car on fyre.
Just starting to weld up a larger hole. Lots of time to take pictures while waiting for the metal to cool…
Right before I close up the welds with the final blobs I give the hole a generous blast of zinc paint. Maybe help to seal up the backside of the new metal.
Finally grind the welds down most of the way, then paint with VHT Epoxy Suspension Paint. To cover the welds I used 4 very light coats with 10 minutes between. The jbweld was thirsty though, it took 3 heavy coats, just kept sucking up the paint, which I think is fine.
Started raining last night.
I am wondering how to help reseal that windshield rubber until that distant day when the windshield comes out. Supposed to use urethane glue to hold rubber onto the metal and glass…
CanadianBJ 