Rust Repair / Paint Matching

cpeehler7

Banned
Hey CI people, this may be a bit of a beginner question, but after this long NY winter, the salt has taken its toll on my car. There are some spots around the wheel well that rust is peaking through, so I want to fix it this spring, before it gets bad. I have kind of ghetto fixed rust before, using a rattle can to cover it temporarily, but I want to do it "right" this time. I don't want to have multiple crappy looking splotches of rattle can on my car haha.

That said I do not know how to weld yet, I should be learning in the nearish future, so I just want to grind down the rust to the metal and cover it until then.

I'm just curious to hear some paint matching techniques you have used in the past on your integras. I have a 1998 Black GSR, and I'm sure the paint has faded a bit since then. I can get a picture of the rust spot if that would help, it's very small and barely showing through the paint. So I imagine a little sanding/grinding would get it to stable metal, and hold me over until I learn to weld.

Any tool/technique recommendations are very welcome. Thanks for the help.
 

dsizer89

New Member
you will need a grinder hopefully there is metal is lefted if cut out the rusted part and weld a new piece in
 

cpeehler7

Banned
Yeah the spot I'm talking about is definitely surface rust, there are other bits of rust at the typical corner of the wheel wells that need to be cut out. I can't do that myself yet, so I'm probably going to have to just patch it until I learn how.

The last time I patched it, I basically just ground out the rust, down to bare metal. Put some rust stop on it, sanded that flat, and rattle canned it. It looked surprisingly good for how ghetto of a fix it was, but is starting to get bad again after all the salt. I really just rush fixed it last year before winter, so it wouldn't rust as bad with all the road salt. Basically tried to slow it down so it wouldn't be such a pain to fix properly later down the road hah.

How would you guys suggest blending paint in? Or would it just be best for now to grind and paint as small of a spot as possible?

@DC4 I will get picks as soon as I can. Probably in the morning, don't have access to my car at the moment.
 


cpeehler7

Banned
Here is a link to a slideshow of 4 pictures. Hope it works, if not I'll edit the post.

http://s1261.photobucket.com/user/cpeehler7/slideshow/

Okay it looks like it works. The first 4 pictures are what matter.

#1 is passenger side wheel well, which is not too bad.
#2 is diver wheel well, which is the worst of the two, the 3rd photo is just the underside of it showing how it has gone though.
#4 is what I was referring to earlier. It's a pretty small spot, wasn't there last year. The salt just brought it out, so I'm sure I could get down to bare metal not problem.

The two wheel wells will need to be cut and welded, but I currently don't have the tools or knowledge to do it. So I will likely patch it until I do have the skills next year.
 
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LoweredDC4

Jimmy
You need to sand all the rust out but keep it small. Then sand the area around the spot and prime.
 


cpeehler7

Banned
I imagine a cheap spray gun would work fine for such a small spot. Would you just recommend getting factory paint and keeping it as small of a spot as possible? I assume my paint has faded a bit, so the spot wont be perfect. How would you try to blend the spot in with the rest of the paint, or should I just accept that it won't be perfect hah?
 

JustinMcGee1

I like Hondas
Here's my opinion, you'll never get it to be perfect unless you repaint the whole car. I'd get the factory paint and just go from there
 

cpeehler7

Banned
Very true, you probably won't be able to tell if you stand 5 feet back anyway. Mismatch paint will look better than rust. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll get the car repainted in a couple years if it's still running well.
 

LoweredDC4

Jimmy
The reason I told you to keep it small when sanding and priming is so you can blend your paint onto the rest of your fender. After you repair and prime the spot. Sand the whole fender and primer spot. Then base over the primer spot ( keep it tight) and then blend onto the fender but stay as tight as you can not getting close to the edges. If you have a lot of color on the edges where the fender butts up against the hood or door the color difference will be notice able. That's why you don't want a lot of color there. After the paint dries, clear coat over the entire fender. This way you can make your fender still match with the rest of the car even though you resprayed it.
 
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