The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Sandblasting vs wire wheel vs scotchbright for rust removal?

I pulled up the sketchy carpet in the cab of my 58 and the floor has a fair amount of surface rust, but appears solid.

I want to clean the rust off and get some fresh paint on it to keep it from degrading any further. In the past I have always used an angle grinder with a brass wire wheel for bulk rust removal and done the final cleanup with a hand drill and a scotch bright pad. In doing some more reading, it seems like a fair number of body people say that using those will just drive the rust particles deeper into the metal (to emerge later) and that the only good answer is to sandblast it.

How true is that? My long term goal is to have a reasonably nice truck that I can pass down to my kids to use as a truck. It will never be perfect and never be a trailer queen. I would prefer to avoid sandblasting because I am not set up to do that large of a project myself. I can pull the seat and the fuel tank and do the floor in sections. I figure I will pull the body mount bolts one at a time and do the floor in quarters (pull one, prep/paint that area, new bolt, repeat) so that the cab hopefully won't be able to shift while I am working.

At some point the dash will get pulled to fix where someone hacked up the center section, but I would like to prep/paint the floor sooner than that.

You might try a product called Evap-O-Rust.

I have seen people talk about evap-o-rust online, but never known anyone that used it themselves. Does it actually work as well as they claim?

I would probably still go over the whole thing with a wire brush just to make sure there are not any loose bits, but if that stuff does work, it would be a *lot* less work.

It works ok...about like any rust remover or rust converter. The main thing to remember is there is no magic product out there. The secondary thing to keep in mind is you have to be able to clean off whatever you've applied. With some products that isn't so easy. A few years ago the hot answer was to use molasses to remove rust. But it turns out that isn't quite the miracle all these people on the internet said it was. And some say baking soda, but I haven't tried that. One guy around here for a while was saying to soak the rusted parts in water. I figured he was kidding or possibly crazy.

You can use phosphoric acid and neutralize it with soda and then just wash off the remaining residue. And you can use very strong vinegar (25% or so), but you need to be careful with any acid not to leave it on too long and be certain to neutralize it at the end of your work. I've heard some say oxalic acid or citric acid and a product named CLR can also be helpful. Just remember to neutralize it.

Good luck!

DO NOT sandblast/media blast inside the cab. No matter what you do, you can't get it all out. Wire wheel does not "drive in rust". You can't "drive in" rust. Just do a good job and use Rustoleum Automotive Rust Reformer. (spray can). It is made for a situation like yours. The can says just remove loose rust and scale. You will be doing much more than that. There are other "encapsulator"/reformer/converter products. Use whatever you like. The wire wheel is the answer for a floor.

Instructions

Thanks Bartamos, I have been using a wire wheel for 30 years and always been happy with the results. That said, I also don't want to keep doing the same old thing just because that is what I have always done.

That rust reformer does look like a final step. Like you said, I will get it as bare as I can before I put it on.

My intention is to strip/paint it, then put a heat shield in and get one of the LMC poly floormats for it.

For rust, I like Master Series Silver: https://masterseriesct.com/

This product is amazing for sealing rust.

...and to add another view. I've had real good results with POR-15. Some prep work, like anything else, is needed but POR15 is some tuff stuff. Its "my choice". ....like I said, just another view point and I've used it on 3 vehicles so far. Chassis and floor pans.

I also second POR-15 with a note. Do not wire wheel the rust off before hand. If you want to knock it down, sand it with some 80 grit and blow away. If you wire wheel it, it will peel off in sheets because the wire wheel polishes the steel smooth. The POR needs that rough surface to bind to. If it gets a good base, it is nearly impossible to get off.

Don’t get it on your hands, or your students will be asking you to wash your hands for the next 2 weeks at least.

I bought an Eastwood contour SCT a while back, this thing is great for metal prep and rust removal. There are plenty of different media heads available for it to handle what ever your working on.

Craig, have you used the Eastwood contour SCT for pain removal? Any suggestion of what type head to use and how quickly does it fill up before you have to put on a new one. I want to strip my rear fenders and bed sides. The paint is bubbling in some places from surface rust under the paint.

Eastwood has a few different heads for paint stripping, I have an 80 grit that works great on things with multi paint layers. I have used it on the front fenders and doors skins with great success, it works quickly and leaves a surface ready for primer. As with any power sander you just need to keep it moving to avoid any real heat build up, other than that it been great.

I'm a 40-60-80 grit on a DA with a die grinder sanding disc to get in the corners kind of guy. If it doesn't get shiny, it gets cut out and replaced. Followed by epoxy.

We have moved away from the issue. It's the inside floor of a truck that, after all these years, is not rusted out. Just rusty. Needs wire wheeled, converted and painted with spray cans. Some of the comments and suggestions are for outside of the vehicle or frame and hard parts. Most info here is too much work and not necessary for this specific question. I'm surprised no one has said powder coat or remove the floor and then junk the truck.

Sanding will not get into the floor pan joints or the stiffening dimples very well and may thin good metal while trying. In this specific question, wire wheel is the answer. A knotted wheel may be too aggressive, The crimp type may be better in this case. The modern converters/encapsulators specifically say you don't need shinny metal. They react to the rust as part of the gig.

This is a mental issue. Us old school guys have a hard time trusting this science. We are used to getting all the rust off down to shinny. Like doing an expensive paint job on a truck body. This ain't that and the conversion/encapsulation chemistry/science is proven. I don't see any flaking or sheets coming off but I only have one picture to look at. It looks like floors I've had a few dozen times. I do live in an area where there is no snow or rain or moisture of any kind except if you run over a toad. Which we don't have because they need water and mud to live in.

You make that joke Bartamos, but I would powdercoat it in a heartbeat if I could figure out how to make that work. I looove me some powdercoated parts...

I pulled the rest of the carpet while I could still stand and the rest looks about the same. When/if the drivetrain comes out I will give the bottom side the same treatment, but for now this will do the job.

As usual, it's what I would do, not what to do.

Just want to re-emphasize the need for a little rust for the encapsulator to bond to. Specifically if you use the Rustoleum brand. I've used it on lots of small parts. If you remove all of the rust, then the encapsulator won't bond properly and will flake off in short order. Bare (not rusty) metal needs something like a self etching primer.

I'm a little late to the party, but I have used Evaporust. I wouldn't consider using it for a floor pan, because it needs to be completely wetted for quite a while (they recommend using paper towels). Even then it's hard to keep it wetted. AND it needs to be rinsed off. It leaves a black residue that isn't real well attached to the base metal, so it has to be rinsed/scrubbed off.
But for small parts, it works very well IMO. If you can completely submerge the parts, that's a good application for Evaporust. Then what I do is rinse and scrub them with a hand-held wire brush.
But for a floor pan, a wire wheel is the ticket, followed by a rust converting primer and topcoat.

Another vote for Evapo-Rust. When I got around to installing the new windshield frame for my '37 Chevy pickup, the frame had acquired surface rust, including inside the glass and wetherstrip channels. The Evap-Rust gave me clean metal again after a two-hour submersion.

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Lately, I've used it to derust a Buick nailhead water-jacket. They also offer a gel version of the product now to address the problem Kevin mentioned.

I've tried the gel version of Evaporust and would give it a 1 out of 5 rating. The first bit I got was too thick to even squeeze out of the bottle, and they sent me a new one, which I still wasn't impressed with. It might work OK for getting flash rust off, but for the flakes and more heavily rusted areas you'd find on a floor under the mat, a wire wheel is the ticket, NOT Evaporust. It has it's uses, but .....

Thanx for the heads-up. I haven't tried the gel and, now, I probably won't.

Rust-Oleum offers a Rust Reformer Spray, which is paintable, and a Rusty Metal Primer. I'm assuming the reformer is for severe, flaky rust and the primer is for light rust?

Thanks

I like the wire wheel for rust removal because it gets into all of the cracks and crevices and does not remove any of the solid metal (as bartamos so eloquently pointed out). It does polish it up, so I go over it with 80 grit paper on a DA sander. And left over rust can now be spot treated, then primed.