The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop 1950 Chevy PU Rust Out of Reach

Hi All, I'm refinishing my 1950 Chevy PU. I'm stripping the rust to bare metal with the intention of epoxy priming everything. I will not be able to get rid of all the rust so I'm wondering what to do in those areas. I've heard of rust converters and encapsulation but I don't know where the sales hype ends and the facts start. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. The picture is of an area below the seat where i can clearly get most but not all the rust out.

The bottom piece might be able to be saved, might not. You might need to do some patching there. It will definitely need more grinding/sanding.

On the back piece, either get yourself and angle die grinder with a 2" pad and go to work on that indent. Another tool that might help would be a drill with an abrasive pad that can usually be found at the local hardware store for a couple of bucks. Similar to this style. You'll be able to get in to all kinds of corners with this type of abrasive wheel.

I don't believe epoxy likes sticking to encapsulator. And I know encapsulator doesn't like sticking to clean metal.

When I encounter pitting like that, I have the truck sandblasted and epoxy primed. Not just for those particular areas, but for addressing similar rust where ever there are pinch welded panel joints.
If that is not in your budget right now, then you can clean up as much of the rust as you can, then use Ospho, clean up the chalky residue after the Ospho is done with its chemical reaction (24 hours), then prime with Rustoleum Rusty Metal primer and paint with Rustoleum color of your choice.
This will stop further rust from occurring to that particular area until someone wants to do a complete restoration with media blasting/epoxy priming.

I'd recommend sandblasting as well. If you can't get someone to do the whole thing for you, you might pick up one of these: Sandblasting gun
I'm assuming you have an air compressor (at least a 5 HP unit) to run the gun.
That gun can be used to get at the crevices and spots that you can't reach with a rotary tool.

The floor pan has a bunch of pits in it and many of them are all the way through, even if you can't tell from looking. If you try to patch it, you'll find yourself chasing the holes till you get to solid metal.

If you're going to use epoxy primer, do NOT use ospho. The residue from ospho is not compatible with epoxy.

Carl's recommendation of Rustoleum rusty metal primer and top coat is one avenue. I restored a Model A using that back in the dark ages.

If you have pieces that you can dunk in a pan, or keep it wet with paper towels, Evaporust Liquid works well. They also have a gel product, but I have not had much luck with that.