Thursday, January 29, 2009

Rust, um... removal! from Big Blue....

There are 3 major spots where Big Blue has rust trouble.

1. Under the windshield rubber
2. The battery box area
3. The rain gutter above the passenger side door

I decided to try to get rid of the rust on the rain gutter by grinding it off, priming it, and then using some matching blue touch up paint that I had ordered a while back. The thing about it is that where the fiberglass top met with the rain gutter, there wasn't enough room for twigs and leaves to wash out. I guess that over the years, this collected rain water where it just sat, rather than running out. You should have seen some of the crap that came out. Here was the worst of the rust:


So as I got into it, I quickly realized that the rust went all the way through the gutter:


And it wasn't long until I determined to just cut the piece out...


A little further back and the metal was fine underneath...


So after all that, I primed it...



and then hit it with blue paint from a rattle can that I ordered from Express Paint. I was shocked at how close it was to the original color...

Touch up paint added!

Here is the missing rain gutter area.


In the end, I was really happy with the results (other than losing a little metal). In the world of dreams, I will have this fixed when the body gets to a spot to take it in to have the whole thing gone over and painted. For now it looks just fine (and, hopefully, I have stopped the rust for a while).


You can barely see the change in shade in the left side of this picture...

The final rust... removal...


NOTE:
Mike asked (in the comment section) about the paint from Express Paint, so I want to post the receipt here:

2 comments:

Anonymous

Brett, looks good! I tried the Express Paint site and found that it didn't go back far enough to have L620 Savannah Beige for my '69 Beetle. Was that Blue's original color that you got from them?

Big Blue's Driver

Mike - When you get to the page in the ordering process that says,

"Search Results - 0 Paint Color(s) Found"

Below that is a link:

"If you know the Color Code for your vehicle but don't see it listed here you can, optionally, use our Manual Order Form."

I clicked on that and filled it out.

I think that I filled in that info and they figured out the paint code. It was L50K. Supposed to match Neptune Blue.

Big Blue's been resprayed a tiny bit lighter at some point, so it's hard to judge, but I am happy with it. It is very close.

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