MY04 is obviously old & has spent most of the last 12 years living outside in the PA extremes on both ends of the weather spectrum. I now have small areas of rust on both sides of the car is the same spots - rear of door sills, & above the rear tires. I'm curious if any of you have experienced this & taken care of it. Obviously I know it requires scrubbing the rust away & then priming & painting. I like to do any work I can myself, so have any of you scrubbed the rust away yourself then taken it to a shop for paint? One thing I do know is that if it's bad enough in those areas,the metal may need to be cut out & replaced before any painting. You can't replace these rear panels or door sills so I have to fix. People say rust is like cancer for a car, I want to get it out of there.

Just curious if any of you have dealt with this, how did you do it? & what did it cost you?

 

Cut out the quarter panel.

Weld in a new quarter panel.

Seam seal.

Paint.


It will rust again fairly quickly, if you use the car in road salt, since welding will burn away paint/coat in unreachable areas. You can try and coat as much of the inner fender as possible. POR15 works well for under-fender areas and water channels (but be careful you don't plug up the channel).


Scrubbing rust and painting is a bandaid. You can do that as a very temporary fix. Use POR15 to prime some of the repair area.

In most practical repair option scenarios....rust is forever, unfortunately.

Good luck.

In a factory build scenario, the body is welded together first and then treated and dipped in a tank of epoxy that gets into internal crevices...and then baked. Its virtually impossible to recreate that.

You'd need to disassemble down to metal body, acid dip, weld/repair without filler, treat, dip, bake, seam seal the entire body, body fill as needed, and then paint. $few million later, you'd have a virtually permanent (or 8-10 year if you use the car in salt) fix for your rust.

 

I've had good results with a weldable spray paint primer for the inside hidden part of metal that I'm welding, and then using a body cavity wax to seal the inside of the metal once everything has cooled. Your results may vary, but i welded in new fenders on my CRV and got 5 years of daily driving in the NE without any rust.

 

The car is no longer a daily. It's under a car cover at all times. It will no longer be driven in rain or snow.

That's why I want to just knock this out now. They're very small areas that I was planning on being cut out, welded & painted. Then coating the underside with the rubberized coating.

 

Is it bad enough that it requires cutting metal out to weld new?

Maybe you can just grind down all the spots and prime and paint?

If you can getdown to bare metal, this should work. Use a quality etching primer.

If its a small spot, you can probably manage this with rattle cans and blending. There are companies that will sell paint matched to your paint code. Since you would blend it, perfect match isn't necessary.

Watch some youtube on blending paint spray.

 

I know passenger side does not need to be cut out, it's just paint bubbling up 2 inches long on that 1 inch flat spot on the edge of the arch. The others I really don't know I'm assuming the worst. There is one spot down on the door sill that can also be ground down bc that is thicker metal than wheel arches. I'm just thinking worst case. I have a friend who can do the cutting & welding cheap if need be & then it would just painting.

I've seen a few youtube videos that would definitely be applicable, but I really want it to be done right. I'm just curious if anyone has had the issue & dealt with it either themselves or had a shop do it & what it cost them. These cars in northeast states that were DD's & not garage kept, have to be experiencing rust.

 

Rust occurs from the inside. At the water channel sometimes but mostly because the factory seam sealer absorbs water and holds it against the metal.

Cars rust at some seam or contact point, right?

You need to cut out the entire affected area.

then scrape out the dead sealer and the metal behind it.

 

There’s a cavity between rear fender outer skin and inner part. Think the letter V. Inside that cavity it starts to rust and rot. It could also show where the rear pinch-well jack spot as rusty residue.

I had a passenger rocker panel repaired twice. Drivers side rear fender split from rocker panel,rear fender peeled back 3-5 inches, Repair work was done inside and properly coated, then it was shut and welded back together.

At this point you can either plan on repairing every 3-5yrs or just drive until your car has holes.

The job can run you $1500-3500.

Proper way of fixing it is cutting out and welding in new parts as previously suggested. There’s no promise rust won’t come back hence why I opted out for cheaper less invasive fix and just to deal with it being recurring as it can be recurring with a big fix as well.

Good luck.

 

I've had a couple Hondas with that, they call it Honda cancer btw.

My last car I ground it down smooth to shiny metal, so it wasn't perforated rust, more like surface rust. Sprayed it with rust converter and primer and a topcoat until I could have it repaired by a body shop, it didn't look so great but I felt better putting an end to the spread of it and getting down to shiny metal. If it gets to bubbling and being perforated then it will get worse and need more repairs including cutting out and replacing as noted above.

 

So you had a shop cut out the affected area & inside & out, weld, prime, paint, including the proper covering inside? & then even still i should expect it to reappear in a few years?

It's a real pain that these quarter panels cannot be replaced like every other panel on this car.