The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Inside of Doors

The bottom of my doors were not really there, rusted thin in many places and gone in others. So, I purchased the bottom of the door and began to cut it out.

My question is how do most people protect the internals from rusting? My thought is a lot of wire brush time followed by POR-15. Any additional input would be appreciated, as I am simply continuing with the wire brush, as I said previously the bottom of the door is off, so getting my arm to the top is easy, getting the various corners is tricky, though.

For the record it is a 58, 1/2ton.

sounds like a lot of wasted time and material to me, do you plan on installing lights and mirrors in there and a see-thru section for the shows? the only place that's a problem inside the doors is right at the bottom where yours rusted thru because of the pinch weld and because the drains got plugged .... you should be planning on how to treat the inside of your welds down there and improving the drains - if you didn't do anything to the top 3/4s of those doors they'd be fine beyond your lifetime, it's the lower 1/4 you'll be doing over

Bill

What do you suggest?

plan on never using the truck in the rain and selling it before it needs more metal patching
coat the inside of the patch pieces well with high zinc weld-thru primer before you weld them in - afterwards spray/slop/pour some rust prevention like POR in the bottom via the inner panel hole, and increase the size of the OEM drains

all you have to do is improve that bottom few inches over the original no-treatment-at-all and it'll last longer, but don't think that you can totally prevent deterioration if it's going to be really used in all weather, the welding residues that you can't clean out will eventually bite you

Bill

What I used to do in my old VWs was plug the drain holes and fill the bottom 2" with a wax based preservative.(Waxoyl)
I would then leave it for a few days then remove the tape from the drain holes and clear the drains.
The excess would drain out,coating the inside of the door bottoms.
After another few days the remaining preservative would have set and you're good to go!
This method is best left 'til after any paintwork.
I'm planning to use this technique on my own doors.

I cut off the bottom of my doors with plans to weld on bottom skins. I removed the window regulator and everything else from inside the door. Then I used a stiff wire brush and removed as much rust as I could. Then I brushed on Zero-Rust on the inside.

i dont see any harm in adding a por or zero-rust product to the inside skins of the doors but after all your welds are completed. then like squeeze said enlarge your oem drain holes and i would call it good, remember it took 50 years for your truck doors to get to where they are now so....

correction 53 years

After patching, I filled the blind corners with fiberglass resin, & used seam sealer on the lower seam. Undercoated everything else.

Dump some rustoleum black in the door, slosh it around, and dump the excess out the bottom holes

i was able to fit my hole door in a glass bead cabinet, (if you have acces to one) I had already cut the rusted parts out and put new metal in. Blasted it to get rid of any of the surface or any residual rust, then primed it