The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop primer questions

I'm having the cab of my truck media blasted soon. I dont have the money or time to get the patch panels put in and paint the car all at once. My question is what can i apply to the bare metal to stop surface rust in the mean time. Iv'e read that if I apply primer it will harden and I will have to remove it before applying a finish coat. I would hate to do double the work. Thanks

I would apply epoxy primer to the bare metal. It has the best corrosion resistance and does not need to be removed for your finish coat. When you are ready to do your body work or finish you will need to sand the epoxy then apply another coat of epoxy before going to your finish work. I assume the body will be out of the elements in a garage? No primer holds up to sunlight very well since it is not a finish coat.

I hope this is helpful.
Regards,
Steve
New Orleans

I am having the same dilemma going forward. I have expoyed the rear fenders, a bedside and the bed steps after they were blasted. I am sure not looking forward to having to sand those parts or even scuff them up with a scotch brite, at least not in the nooks and crannies. Does everything need to be sanded, the undersides & insides of fender lips, etc?

For the rest of the sheet metal & cab, I thought I would use a DA or some of the other discs to strip the paint and only blast the hard to access spots. However, those same hard to reach spots would then need to be painted with epoxy and scuffed/sanded down the road before an epoxy re-coat and top coat Not attractive.

I am wondering if self etch primer has the time window and sanding requirements as epoxy, but haven’t looked into it yet. I might consider trying to replace all the patch panels and do any filler work and save blasting the nooks and crannies until just before it is ready to topcoat. A problem with that would be uncovering something that takes a while to fix. I guess I could let it surface rust while fixing it and then re-blast. I’m sort of thinking out-loud. Finally something like Ospho or Picklex could be sprayed on the blasted metal to delay rust, but I’m not sure if those will last long enough.

What has everyone else done or suggest? I really don’t see myself writing checks, so it’s going to be a do it myself thing.

When you say sand the epoxy primer and put another coat on prior to the finish, do you mean scuff up the primer or sand it to bare metal again?

When you say sand the epoxy primer and put another coat on prior to the finish, do you mean scuff up the primer or sand it to bare metal again?

You can either use sandpaper or a scuff pad. You need to scuff up the surface, not sand to bare metal. You can use 400 grit if you are topcoating with a straight color or 600 grit if you are topcoating with a metallic.
Regards,
Steve
New Orleans

scuffing is all that's required, and it needs to be done if the epoxy primer is over 72 hours old, not a big deal, need to break the surface 'gloss' to provide good adhesion for the next coat regardless what it is, other types of primer are not moisture proof

Eric - I've had chemically stripped metal phosphate treated, and in good storage the metal stayed 'virgin' looking for years, but I still epoxy prime everything now regardless if it'll have to be resanded - save some work/time now, wind up spending even more down the road totally stripping and redoing pieces, etching primer that's sat for months/years should be totally removed ... YMMV

Bill

You can see my reply in few posts before this one "Rust Converter". It explains a little about Right Stuff De-Ruster, metal conditioner, rust preventer. I use it with great results.

Spies makes a product called( Red Brown) you can apply body filler and 2k primer over it w/o sanding . its great to hold a bare metal part from rusting . Mark