due to capillary action the driver side is the worst area in my leaking trunk area it's right on the body seams, i have no idea when the sealer failed was way before i got the car
driver side
behind
passenger side
behind
what products do you recommend that will help stop this issue.
i was going to let the body shop fix all the rust on my car but they 4 times the price i paid for the car O_O so i'm going to be doing the work my self and i never done anything like this. but i'm jumping in with both feet and having at it. first step is to stop the trunk leak and then tackle the holes in the cabin floor
Grind down the red stuff till you get to good metal, and then a product like that will work well. Depending on how deep the rot is, you might need to weld in fresh metal, or fiberglass a little bit.
Here's the problem. If this car has seen winter in Indiana, the rust will continue until the MgCl2 crystals are cleaned out from the pores of the metal. The rust needs to be ground down, the remaining clean metal needs to be cleaned and prepped with a rust inhibitor after being washed clean, and then fresh metal needs to replace it. Following, it needs to be sealed with an epoxy primer before repaint.
I lived in Indiana for some time. The mag cl salt they use in IN destroys cars and requires a ton of effort to stop once it has set in. I'm currently having two cars blasted to bear metal to prep and start again because of this, and I took very good care of them during winter.
The seam seen from behind on your driver's side looks to me like it's been welded before.. I may be wrong judging from the pic, but it looks like it. The seam on the passenger side looks like it has some kind of bondo/filler on the outside, you can see how it flakes off. The little white part laying on top there is not metal neither paint, looks like bondo. May also be seam sealer.
What you first need to do is clean up the area to get an idea of where the filler is, if there's any, and figure out where you have pitted metal and where the metal is clean. The metal may be pitted much longer in than how it appears from the outside, especially if it's got bondo all over.
Grind it down to get a look of how things really are, the area on the driver's side really looks bad so I'd cut and weld that with fresh metal. The passenger side might be saveable with sand blasting, problem is getting between the panel seams which is really not possible even with a blaster.
I would advise against filler when you're done, I hate bondo with a passion. Either you use tin, or you use nothing. The filler hides whatever rust that comes back until you're up in the same situation again. Also don't grind over it and be done with it - you have lots of small pits in the metal from the rust where the grinder won't be able to reach but the blaster will. Besides getting the rusted metal out should be priority #1.
Then I would just spray or brush the area with a heavy oil and move on. Sealing out oxygen and water with a petroleum product will halt the corrosion process and give you many more years.
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