No rust! Now what?

[derk]

Thanks for all of your help, guys.

In addition to my brake question, I got what I thought was my rusty door edge guard off.

Turns out the stainless piece is fine, the metal piece with the vinyl covering was all that was rusty!

Whew.

My floorboards, as you can see, are relatively rust free. (Or are they?) Thank god for inside storage for 14 years.

Anyway, what do you experts think I should do to keep it that way? My thought was to take everything out of the interior and POR-15 the whole thing. Any thoughts?

Thanks for your advice.

[mperdue]

Hey derk,

Your floor looks pretty good. I'd recommend at least taking th seats out and look under there. My passenger side floor was completely solid except under the seat where the frame rail is welded to the floor, and along the seam of the seat mount. You could have the same problem. Here's how mine looked. http://www.utdallas.edu/~perdue/firewall.jpg

I"d also say go with the POR-15 job if you don't mind having the car out of commission for a little while. You'll never have to worry about the floors again! Good luck!

Michael

[Bambikiller240]

Originally posted by derk

My floorboards, as you can see, are rust free. Thank god for inside storage for 14 years.

Anyway, what do you experts think I should do to keep it that way? My thought was to take everything out of the interior and POR-15 the whole thing. Any thoughts?

Thanks for your advice.

Derk: Sorry to contradict you, but that floorpan IS NOT rust free. There is significant rust showing in the cut out areas of the tar mat. My car's floorpans looked exactly like that when I decided to POR15 them to keep the (what I THOUGHT was light surface) rust from getting worse. The problem lies in that the water/moisture that created the rust that you see, has most likely crept under the tar mat and it stays there a lot longer and eats the metal much more. When I removed the TarMat.........I found significant (MAJOR) rust and when doing the PreTreatment for the POR discovered that there were actually perforations all the way through the floor in several places! Thank God I didn't wait any longer to address the issue!

Since you asked for advice..........If you plan to keep the car, and want it to not deteriorate any further....I'd remove the tarmat and treat everything with the full POR15 treatment. I'd be doing BOTH sides of the car too. Then as Michael said, you will not have to worry about the floors again. :classic:

The POR15 treatment is time consuming and costs a bit of $, but is absolutely worth every minute and dollar you will spend on it.

You will not regret doing it (after you've finished doing it!).

Just my $.02

Carl

[derk]

Thanks for the advice. Will go for it.

What's a tar mat? I thought I was down to bare metal.

Also should I do anything under the car or just POR-15 the inside?

[260z]

Tarmat is a soundinsulating material that is "clued" to floors etc. As far as I can see you or some former owner has already removed it?

Edit; Carl is right and has hawks eyes... It seems really that you have the tar mat still on..If you poke it with screwdriver you should see that it is not metal...Normally the tarmat is "clued" on over undercoating/primer and the finishing paint is sparayed over it.

I should pay more attention to those pictures...=)

Personally I would not do any treatment before removing all showing "surface rust". And as it was said earlier the moist is bad. Make sure that there is no moisture before any treatment. The rust under paint has some moisture in it and if it is left under coating is going to pop out some day....With more severe damage I think.

I use drill with metal brush for removing. There are many different kinds of tools for basic drills in case of rust removing.

[ZmeFly]

its that thick about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick black goo that is sitting on your floor. i had some light surface rust underneath that on my 71

as the previous person stated take it off and por 15 it.

i used a heat gun to make it softer and it peeled right up and there were some spots of surface rust there.

nothing significant though. you have a nice clean car keep it that way and take care of that easy rust now before it becomes a 1000 dollar job later

[Bambikiller240]

Originally posted by derk

Thanks for the advice. Will go for it.

What's a tar mat? I thought I was down to bare metal.

Also should I do anything under the car or just POR-15 the inside?

In the picture that you uploaded, there are two rubber plugs visable, right? Those plugs are mounted in the metal floorpan. Do you see that "that area" is about 1/16" lower that the BLUE area of the rest of the floorpan? Also there are two more areas (Square in shape) toward the front of the floorpan that are similarly lower than the blue area of the floor pan. Those 4 small areas are the only places you are seeing the actual metal of the floorpan, and they look rusty to me All of that blue area is the tar mat. Scrape it with a screwdriver and you'll see that it isn't metal at all. It is a sound/vibration deadener used by the factory. It also holds water/moisture that condenses or otherwise collects for a long time, giving plenty of opportunity for CANCER to begin.

For my time and $, I'd be treating BOTH inside and outside of the floorpan with POR15. In fact I did just that, but so far only on one side due to a lack of time. I have FIRM plans to do the other floorpan in the spring when I have the time to keep the car off the road for a week and do the work.

[Britt Boyette]

I saw the same problem with my tarboards. They were a pain in the butt to remove but I found water underneth on the drivers side. My 74 260Z came with a chromate primer that really saved a lot of metal from cancer. You will have to remove all of the tarboard before you try to to anything with the metal. I have been using a wire cup brush on a 4" angle grinder to remove the rust spots and everytime I hit a little chunk of that stuff that I missed, it just smears it into a black goo. Cleans up with actone, but it packs up on the brush.

[Bambikiller240]

Originally posted by Britt Boyette

I saw the same problem with my tarboards. They were a pain in the butt to remove...........

If the need arises again to remove the Tar mat, use a hair dryer to heat it up a bit then you can use a putty knife to scrape it up very easily. There will still be a few tiny "bits" of it left, but I just wiped down the entire bare metal floorpan with a cloth soaked in acetone and they were instantly gone. Very easy and almost no clean up required as when using a wire brush or wheel to abrasively remove that crap.

PS you don't need to buy the POR Solvent for clean-up as the acetone will work just fine for that too. If you need to THIN the POR15 for spraying instead of brushing it on, I WOULD buy their solvent.

[dohc]

I was just reading the above and wondering; Can you buy new tarmats to keep the sound down? Are they even worth putting back, and if not what can be used to keep sound and vibrations down?

Any ideas? What have your guys done?

Cheers,

Ross.

[Bambikiller240]

Hi Ross:

Go to http://www.eastwoodcompany.com/ and do a search on "Quiet Pads" and you'll see a product that is similar and the has been reccomended by others as a suitable substitute for the factory TarMat. I will be purchasing these in the spring when I do the POR 15 process on the Passenger Floorpan of Bambikiller. Right now the driver side POR15 project is done, but I left it without the pads, and the road noise is greater than before I removed the factory stuff.

[Bambikiller240]

Derk:

Here's a link to a Thread about POR15 treatments.

http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4657

You may find the info useful. Enrique Scanlon has more experience with it than I, but we both seem to agree that it is a great product