Chevy Malibu Rust Repair

Chevy Malibu Quarter Rust Repair

This is a documention I put together of a Chevrolet Malibu rust repair. It is a very common spot for them to rot out, right below the fuel door. More often then not it's at the point where new metal needs to be welded in because of a hole in it. This job luckly did not require that, it was well taken care of. There is a little bit of rust bubbling out that needs to be handled before it grows into a hole.

Here's the Car:

After we remove the fuel door and plastic sheild we can see a bit more of the damage:

So before I get carried away with the outside I had a quick look on the inside and seen the extent of the rust:

It isn't too bad, so the game plan is to take care it this first. I'll remove it with a die grinder with a 3M stripping disc attatched like so:

So the the rust is removed as best as possible. I removed the wheel but still didn't have enough clearence to get my sandblaster in there.

so what I'l do next is apply some POR-15 metal ready. If it were clean metal I'd have chosen just straight epoxy, but since I know I didn't get 100% into the pitting I've decided to use this chemical:

you can see by the dust on it I don't use this product that often. (we don't do much rust at our shop). next I'm going to apply some epoxy, then after some drying time I followed it with some gravel guard. Watch the sequence:

Alright so now that the inside is take care of we'll move on to the outside. Using the Stripping Wheel again I'll remove the rust from the surface and it will look something like this:

As you can see there is still some rust, most remaining in the pits where the wheel can't access. So I'll use the sandblaster to remove the rest of the rust:

It will look like this when done:

Too see the rest of the repair click here