Fixing rust spots on a car

Factual Questions
1

Hello all,

I noticed there are a couple chips in the paint on my car, one on the hood and one on the passenger side front quarter panel. The chips are about the size of the tip of my pinkie finger. I noticed them quite a while ago, but never quite got around to doing anything about it, but now they’re starting to rust.
One person told me to get some fine grit sandpaper and sand the rust spots out, then just get some touch-up paint. It’s a fairly new car, so I’d like it to look nice, and somehow that doesn’t sound like it would blend terribly well. Mainly though, I’m worried about keeping the rust at bay.

Is this something I can easily do on my own, or do I need to pay a professional to do it for me? Will body shops do touch up work for small spots, or would they insist on re-painting the entire hood and quarter panel?

Thanks!
~Mixie

2

Depending on the size of the spots a good auto detailer can take care of the issues for relatively cheap. They’ll do essentially that: sand, prime, paint sand & buff. You may still see a spot upon inspection, but it will kill the rust.

3

Mixie…

Trust me on this…I do this every day…well… use to, now I run the shop. Dealership body shop.

Anyway, just clean the spots up real well. DO NOT use any sandpaper or abrasives, it’ll make the spots larger. You can use some light rubbing compound to clean the spots, this will work well.

Purchase touch up paint at your dealer. This way he/she can get the correct paint code off of your vehicle.

The touch up paint should have a brush in the bottle. Shake up the paint before you try to apply it. If the paint is a lacquer base, which it is here that we sell, you will have to apply it in an area with absolutely no wind or sun. The reason for this is the paint on the brush will dry up before you are able to apply it to the spot.

Don’t worry if your application is a 'lil messy as you can easily remove the touched up paint with lacquer thinner. Most factory finishes are of a baked enamel, so the lacquer thinner should not hurt the paint.

For best results, keep the touch up paint in your home as the paint does not like the cold.

Hope this helps.

Kraig

4

Thanks for the advice.
How do I get rid of the rust if I don’t sand the spots down? I was told that if I don’t actually remove the rust that it will continue to spread under the paint, and eventually it will chip off and be a whole lot worse–is this true?
As you can tell, I know absolutely nothing about this–where do I get rubbing compound? Is it just called “rubbing compound” or is there a brand name I should ask for? Do I get lacquer thinner at a hardware or paint supply store?

Thanks again,
~Mixie

5

"How do I get rid of the rust if I don’t sand the spots down? "

I don’t get it either, how can you touch up without doing something about the rust first? You can’t, it’ll just rust through again. Obviously someone forgot a very important step:
visit the hardware store & get a small bottle of some ruststop, dab some of that on with a q-tip & let it dry. THEN you can use the paint.
That ruststop works great.

6

Isn’t it just surface rust? You should be able to wipe it off with some thinner.

JZ

7

What sort of thinner?

Handy, will the ruststop remove the rust entirely, or just stop it from spreading and doing more damage? I just want to make sure I take care of this properly–it’s my first car, that is, the first care I bought with my own money, and I’d like to take good care of it. We just recently moved to Eugene, Oregon, and it’s much wetter here than it was in Davis, so I imagine I need to take care of this right quickly, before it spreads any more.

Thanks again,
~Mixie

8

I used some Rust stop on some small spots & those never got any bigger even 7 years later, it wasn’t too effective on big spots. It chemically alters the rust so that’s the idea. At Kragen for $12.00 they have a small rotary thingy with attachments so you could grind rust off a small spot.

9

AFAIK rust stopper converts the rust from iron (II) oxide to iron (III) oxide and as such passivates the metal so that the rust will not continue once covered over by paint. Fail to do this and the new paint will blister within months if not weeks.

Better yet is to sand the rust completely away, passivate the bare metal, prime and paint. But, this can be a PITA, especially if you have a difficult to blend paint such as metallic or pearlescent. Solid colours are much easier.

10

My car is a dark, metallic green 98 Honda Accord. The spots are pretty small, less than a centimeter across, so I imagine sanding the spots would make them more noticable than just dabbing on the ruststop. The chip on the hood is definitely rusted, the one on the front quarter panel has not yet started to rust. Should I put rust stop on it anyway, just in case, or would that be overkill and unneccessary?
It sounds like what I need to do is get some ruststop, spot that on, then cover with touch-up paint, cleaning the edges with lacquer thinner. Does that sound plausible, or is the consensus that I need to actually sand or grind the rust off?

Thanks,
~Mixie

11

Mixie? Honestly, if your goal is to truly take care of the vehicle as best you can - I truly recommend that you get out the old “yellow pages” and make some calls. What we’re all talking about here requires a fairly deft hand and more than a little bit of experience I reckon. I know of special “mobile paint touch up” businesses who will drive their van around to your workplace or home and perform the touch up job for you while you sit at your desk. I’d recommend giving them a ring.

12

I remember reading up on this a while back. One site detailed a multi-step process that I tried with some decent results.

Clean up the area, getting rid of rust, dirt and loose paint. They make small “pencil” sanders for this. Adding the rust-stop to visible rust couldn’t hurt. But if the chip isn’t through the primer, you should be good.

Touch up the spot with paint from your manufacturer. Make sure you build the paint up so that it’s at least as high as the surrounding paint. (mine shrinks as it dries)

After the paint is good and dry (may take several days to harden well), get some very fine sandpaper and sand the touchup smooth. I think I used 1000grit, 1500grit then 2000grit. I wrapped the sandpaper around a small metal object so I’d have more control and would sand less of the original paint. This stuff is usually wet/dry sandpaper, so you can constantly hose the paper and area down to keep the sandpaper from “cloggin up”

After it was sanded all nice and pretty, I went over it with rubbing compound, then polishing compoud, then waxed it. It turned out decent enough on my first try. The color matches, the paint is level with the original paint and it’s nice and shiny.

I’ll poke around on the net and see if I can find the article. I think it was on a site that sells professional detailers supplies. They had a lot of other articles on maintaining a professional finish as well.

13

If it’s just surface rust, just about any thinner will do, but I use lacquer thinner.

JZ

14

My cousin has been doing paint chip and scratch repair for a number of years, working for several dealerships, and she’s quite good at this. I occasionally haved worked for her, and have learned a few things, but certainly don’t know it all. I think with her paint system, it’s not necessary to use primer, and most small chips, I doubt really need sanding, and will probably make matters worst by enlarging the hole. I’ve never heard of my cousin having customers complaining to her that the paint chips she touched up didn’t adhere, and she’s had some long time customers that keep coming back over the years. If one insists on going with primer and sanding out the chip, I would recommend Theios suggestion of a pencil eraser sander. Take a paper hole puncher, and cut out some fine grit sand paper with it. Then take the eraser end of the pencil, and glue the sandpaper cut-out on to it. Then rubbing the pencil back and forth between your hands, start sanding the chips you want to get out. My cousin uses very small tip artists brushes for her chips, because she only fills in just the chip. Not like a great deal of detail people who will just dab over each spot. But if you use the pencil eraser sander suggestion, you might also consider a pencil type air brush. She rarely uses the air brush, but if it is a large enough area she will. If it is your own car, and time isn’t a problem, wait a couple of hours with the car out in the hot sun, or over night if the weather is cool, and then take some 1500 (or 1000) grit sandpaper like the other poster suggested and then sand over the complete chip and surrounding area after you’ve painted it. Then use some polisher (she uses medium cut), and polish over it. If you’ve dabbled enough paint onto the chip area, to where it was equal or slightly higher than the paint surface, you can actually make some chips disappear completely.

For scratches, a few neat tricks I picked up from her, is to take the lacquer thinner and rub over the scratch with a rag or paper cloth. If during the wiping motion, you see the scratch temporarily disappear, then clear itself will fill in that scratch without using any paint.

For individuals that don’t have a lot of cars to detail, and just want your own car done, take the other posters suggestion of going to the dealership and getting the paint from them since they sell small capsules of specialty paint for each car. If you tell me what car you have, I can generally tell you what location to find the paint code in or I’m sure some at the dealership willl know where to look.

All cars will get chips in due time. As much as I like the color silver, I don’t recommend buying a silver car if you care for its appearance. It’s the worst color to touch up. If the chips look good in the sun, then it will be dark in the shade. If you match it to where it looks good in the shade, then it will be a different color in the sun. Silver can drive you crazy, and I have yet to find anybody that can consistently make the color match. On some silvers, very few, maybe 10% the silver will match out okay, but 90% will have problems going from the sun to shade with the touch-uped areas. The solid colors are the best, in particular, white, red, and black. Metallic blue and metallic green are also easy to match up. Ford uses a special two stage red for some of it’s metallic red, and it’s a killer to apply, takes up a lot of time, but looks okay after it is done.

If you don’t want all of the hassle to go through all of this, most detail shops should do a car for about $50.00. From what I’ve seen, most of them are quite sloppy though. Look at some other cars they have done before you turn your car over to them. Also look at what kind of brushes they are using. If it is bigger than the chip, then don’t even bother with these people.

JZ

15

Mixie…

The compound will clean out the “rust” appearing spots.

It is just surface “rust”. Will clean rite off. Pencil erasers & small air brushes are fine, but I’m sure you dont want this expense.

As far as a primer, it is not needed since you will be filling the small spot with paint anyway.

The only way the spot will get any worse is if you DONT do anything with it .

Just keep it simple.

A dab of touch up paint is all you need…

16

=)

Thanks, all. I don’t mean to sound like a total blathering idiot, I’m just nervous about car care. Thanks, Italian dad. :slight_smile:
I’ll be making a trip to my local Kragen-esque store tomarrow.
Peace,
~Mixie