Thread: One method of rust prevention.

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From time to time someone will come on with a concern about protecting bare steel from corrosion, so I thought I'd put up some examples of pieces from the '65 Dodge Hemi car.

These are a few of the splash shields and other parts I've been cleaning up to prep for paint. Since these were under the fenders and such they had some of the factory finish on them and a fair amount of surface rust. I ran them through the blast cabinet to clean off all the remaining paint and rust and wanted to prep them before priming and final paint. The bead blasting isn't the most aggressive for rust removal, but I like the relative smoothness of the finish the glass beads leave. There's not an excessive amount of roughness, yet enough to give some "tooth" for the paint to adhere to.

Once clean I brush them down with phosphoric acid, let it sit for about 15 minutes, and then wash (neutralize) the pieces with plenty of clear, clean water. This does two things, it puts a protective coating on the clean steel, and converts any small specs of rust that might have been missed in the blasting. Lots of folks here have expressed their affection for different products, but I've used this for years. It's effective, and cheap as well as easy to get. Phosphoric acid is marketed under a number of commercial names such as Naval Jelly, or Rust Mort (typical body shop supply). Also known as metal prep, it is also the active ingredient in most etching primers. Being somewhat thrifty I buy it by the gallon from a commercial chemical supply house and it lasts for years. In fact it's been so long since I bought the current bottle I don't even remember how much it was, but well under $10 would be my best recollection.

Here's the part I've been saving up to show you guys. The longer rectangular shaped piece I did 3 months ago, it's just been hanging in the garage since. We've had one of our wettest winters in years, yet not a speck of rust has grown on it. It works well.