Phoenix Gold Phorum

Well, I've decided to take a stab at the rust on my 4Runner.

It's got 4 problem areas as far as body rust is concerned: All fenders except the left front (no idea why) and the tailgate. I'm going after the three fenders. The tailgate is a whole different game, not because it's so rusty but because I have a mangled rear bumper that's also rusty and I don't intend on fixing it right away. I figure I'll take care of the rear end in one fell swoop sometime later.

Anyways, so my plan is grinding, sanding, bondo, grinding, sanding, priming, sanding, priming, sanding, painting.

I've started to feel out the job on the left front fender and it's going alright so far. Nothing great but I got a couple not-big, not-small rust holes patched nicely. I've sanded it to a degree but it still needs some evening out.

I'm thinking about taking some pictures for both before/after and for the sake of documenting my ghetto-styles fix job.

Any bondo, rust, paint tips you guys got? The first batch of bondo I mixed up had too much hardner in it, I think. It hardened to quickly and was really rough so I just sanded most of it off and put on a much smoother and evener layer on top then sanded that down to a nice smooth finish.

I know it'll never look perfect but I'm hoping for something better than rust.

so, you're filling rust holes with bondo?

the only true way to fix it is to remove all of the rust, and weld in new metal.

the way you are fixing it, you'll just end up with bigger problems, it'll look good for a while, until you start seeing rust again.

I'm grinding 90-95% of the rust away and a bunch of the paint on non-rusted surface around the rust, too. I've also been using a bunch of rust converter on the 5-10% of remaining rust. I suspect this does little to nothing, but I'm going to try and find out more about that before I use it on other spots.

The only spot I've worked on so far was a mix of surface rust, which I ground all off and two small holes rusted through which I couldn't grind all of the rust of off, unfortunately.

I understand the risk and your obvious concern with this approach. If the rust isn't 100% gone, it will eventually be back without question. I'm hoping grinding off 90-95% of the rust will mitigate this for the purposeful lifetime of the vehicle. Hope don't mean shit, though. I know.

The better fix for the part where I couldn't grind off all the rust near the small holes should have been cut out and replaced with a panel such as you stated. For this first small test though, I think I've been coming along somewhat well.

Please keep in my my truck is a 1991 4Runner with over 318,000 Km on the odometer. It's not in perfect cosmetic shape. One main reason I'm doing this is to fix the much larger rust problem on the driver's side rear fender as it's causing another body piece to fall off and the trim hangs loose as a result. It's more than cosmetic at this one spot, it's function.

That said, Tom did bring up a good point to me which puts all of this work I'm doing in question... if the cosmetics are already messed up, why bother fixing/removing the rust anyways?

The answer is: I don't know.

Honestly, I've just started one spot and it seems to have worked well so far but I haven't primed or painted yet so I have yet to really see. It's very solid and fairly smooth though.

Anyways, thanks for the input. I know you're right, but I think I'm doing the best this 4Runner deserves. I will probably have to do something similar to what you're saying for the rear driver's side but I'm not sure how I'm going to weld anything.. maybe my blacksmith friend... ?

So, I'm not happy with the paint.

Yet.

The color of paint I got is a bad match (generic glossy black) so I'm going to get a "Toyota Black" today and a bunch of very fine grit sand paper (1000, 1500?, 2000) and planning on doing some wet sanding and touch up with the toyota black on the only spot I've painted so far. Everything else will get toyota black from the get go with some wet sanding, too of course.

I am satisfied with my rust fixing and bondo even though it's not 100% perfect. I'm sure the next couple patch jobs will be just that much better too. It's done well enough to flow with the body and fill in the places where I removed the rust, it's just the damn paint that suck right now.

I'm considering a complete re-paint for this summer but who knows?