What do I do with this?

[jdiesel33]

Please see pic below. This is the back half of the driver side floor pan in my '68. You've probably seen some of my posts on here about finding someone to replace my floor and trunk pans. I finally found someone I was comfortable with to do it. Things seem to be going well and he seems to really know his stuff. Older guy with tons of experience that does this kind of stuff for a living. That said, I was told by someone else to grind off the rust on the floor pan in the pic (the rear floors are still good, it is the front that are being replaced) and then treat it with something like POR15 and paint and all of that. This guy is telling me that is not what I want to do. He says leave the rust and put some "rust inhibitor" on it which will "kill" the rust and "turn it back into metal". After he cut the front sections of the pans out, we saw that the frame rails and some other stuff under there had surface rust as well. He said to treat these the same way. Leave the rust and put this inhibitor on it. He said it is something you can get at a auto parts store. Is this the right thing to do? Seems weird to me to leave rust on anything. 

[Silver R/T]

Are you using por15? If so he's right. POR15 will bond to rust much better than smooth rust free steel. In fact people who had bad experience with por15 are people that removed ALL of the rust and smoothed out steel and then put por15 on it. You don't want to do that. Other thing you can do is sandblast area, por15 will bond to that very well.
Other people have been using other products such as Rust Mort, Zero Rust, etc. I prefer por15 since Ive had a bit of experience with it and I trust it to work.

[jdiesel33]

Are you using por15? If so he's right. POR15 will bond to rust much better than smooth rust free steel. In fact people who had bad experience with por15 are people that removed ALL of the rust and smoothed out steel and then put por15 on it. You don't want to do that. Other thing you can do is sandblast area, por15 will bond to that very well.
Other people have been using other products such as Rust Mort, Zero Rust, etc. I prefer por15 since Ive had a bit of experience with it and I trust it to work.

Dang Silver R/T, you're becoming like my own personal consultant!!!! I appreciate it bro. I'm gonna have to come and take you for a ride when this bad boy is done.

[A383Wing]

I would let him drive it... 

[jdiesel33]

I would let him drive it... 

I'm good with that!

[Back N Black]

If it were me i would remove the rust. Seem like a patch job. 

[BigBlockSam]

He says leave the rust and put some "rust inhibitor" on it which will "kill" the rust and "turn it back into metal".

   i've been using eastwood's rust inhibitor , works well . the rust turns gray . after that i spray it with eastwood's rust encapsulater . leaves everything purdy.  i use the flat black one but first i would remove as much rust as i could .

[Charger-Bodie]

If it were me i would remove the rust. Seem like a patch job. 

This is my opinion also! Miricle products that seem too good to be true usually are. 


You cant go wrong with doing it right. Period

[BigBlockSam]

Miracle products that seem too good to be true usually are.

no miracle...............Science

[Charger-Bodie]

Miracle products that seem too good to be true usually are.

no miracle...............Science

Even if the stuff does work......I still feel better about getting rid of all the rust by sandblasting and epoxy primer.

[BigBlockSam]

I still feel better about getting rid of all the rust

yes i agree, i would try to remove all the rust i could . wire wheel , grinder any way i could then use these products.

when i did the quarter panel on my daytona i spent 3 hours grinding and wire  wheeling the inner structure . then i used these products. the rust inhibiter is mainly for rust you can't get to but as a fail safe i use it all over the place. Rene 

[69*F5*SE]

That floorboard looks pretty solid with only surface rust.  It should be easy to remove to improve.    Ted

[jdiesel33]

That floorboard looks pretty solid with only surface rust.  It should be easy to remove to improve.    Ted

That's what I thought too. The guy told me to leave it though so as not to remove any metal at all while trying to remove it. He said the rust inhibitor would make it even stronger with the rust still being on there.

[StockMan]

I had a very similar circumstance but a little worse.  You should be able to work with these pans by the looks of it.  I would have liked to hang on to my original floor pans but after blasting decided that they needed to go.  By cutting them out I was able to lightly blast/epoxy/paint the insides of the frame rails which were flaking quite a bit.  I also found that the undersides of the pans inside the rails were also quite bad.  I didn't like the por15 product, but as the other fellow said, the stuff doesn't like a smooth surface.  I liked Dupont's expoxy which apparently does have a bit of rust inhibitor in case of some minor but of rust left after prep. 

For a pitted rusty surface like you have here a light blasting is the way to go.  Wire wheel doesn't get into the pits as well.

[Silver R/T]

Another way you can fix it is blast the area, fill pits from rust with body filler and primer with good quality epoxy primer and follow with your basecoat.