Rust repair help

[mhmitszach]

I'm giving my car a good wash and wax this weekend, weather permitting, and I need to figure out what to do about some rust that I've got building up.

I have a few chips on the wheel well edge, I figure that is fine to sand down a little and put touch up paint on.

But at the bottom of the wheel wells in the front, rust has really gotten to them. The one is just rusted on the top, but the other side is soft the whole way through. I figure the one should be fine to just sand up a little and spray some sort of primer for rust? What do I do for the other part?

The other side, like I said is soft, and the beam (?) or railing that runs along the underside of the car right there is rather rusty too. I can hit it and play around with it to make rust come out. What do I need to do for this? I realize I'd probably have to like do serious body work to really fix it. But what about just delaying the progression of the rust?

If having pictures would help, I can get those tomorrow.

Thanks.

[wyatt]

Sanding is good, but you have to REMOVE all the rust. Do the sanding/scraping/grinding to get the big rust off, then use navel jelly or comparable. It chemically changes the rust to something else, and then you can do your painting. If you get some navel jelly, you can read the instructions and get an idea for what to do, or ask someone that works where you buy it. If you sand and paint, odds are you will not get ALL of the rust, and your paint will bubble before long.

[bgd73]

if this is for a unibody vehicle..?
the front bottom of wheel arch and end of rocker panel is indeed a very imprtant beam. I allow personally (and local inspectors that know better) NO rust there.. no patch jobs with miracle artist goop (bondo) .. it needs STEEL and WELD.

To reveal an extreme, my own car, I have got a subaru with diff lock that needed, not only a doubling of original, in areas you mentioned, but extra steel welded internally.. way beyond oem. Front wheel drive stay elusive, squishy, wiggling and comfortable.. but there WILL be a day when aggressive driving gets a blunt shove into your path and these problems are catastrophic.

NO rust in the wheel arches and rockers. I am not being extreme in mentioning it...

there is alot more replacement panels for cars like the escort, etc.. go for them, if it means keeping ugly seams for awhile, you can still be assured it is safe.

I have zero mercy on the rust in those areas. My locale nearly killed me playing these cheap games in the past.

[mhmitszach]

I'm not sure what unibody means.

But I looked again, the driver side is all surface rust. I should be able to clean that and paint it fairly easy.

The passenger side is a whole other story. The bottom of the wheel well is pretty much completely soft, with the paint on top gone and it bubbled on the bottom.

The majority of the bottom seam of the rocker panel is surface rust with maybe 2 or 3 segments that are rusty within.

I feel like I should take a picture....