newbie

[joeschmo]

Hey there, im 16 years old and have an older isuzu trooper.

It has rust on the rear quarters and around the windshield. I do no have access to a welder. One of the quarters rusted through in one spot. I was wondering if i just used long strand fiberglass or w/e it is called would that be sufficent. Would rust come through soon? I will sand out all the rust and just go over it with fiberglass. I would also go over on the backside and then spray it with POR15. The chrome moldings go there so it will hide the repairs anyways. But my question is what supplies will i need, i have block sanders but dont have a compressor to run a DA. What fiberglass would you recommend or would Bondo be better.

[dave_demented]

out of curiosity, what year trooper are we talking about? my best friend has one. being 17, i can imagine how you feel about the whole rust thing, and not having a welder to work with. the best method would be to sandblast the rust, cut out the bad section and weld in a new panel, im sure you know that. you can get away with grinding the rust off, treating it with a rust covnerter(like picklex20, which len sells here) and then continuing with your filler, etc.

if possible, treat the rust on the otherside of the metal too, if any

as far as filling the spot that is rusted through with shortstrand, it depends on how big of a hole your filling. ive filled pinholes with it, but nothing any bigger that a pencil eraser, and i REALLY did not want to do that. if it is just a few pinholes, follow the steps i outlined before, only make sure you get the inner side of the metal as clean as the outside and put a coat of the filler on the inside as well as the outside. if its not any bigger than like an inch, and not in a very visible spot, you can get away with a piece of aluminum tape, covered with shortstrand, etc.

that is probably what i would do without access to a welder, best of luck to you

[joeschmo]

hey there its a 1990, what about longstrand fiberglass? also i would put the rust inhibitor first then the fiberglass?

[dave_demented]

i cant say that ive ever really worked with longstrand, maybe someone else can chime in on that. and yea, you would put the filler right over the rust converter

[Len]

hey there its a 1990, what about longstrand fiberglass? also i would put the rust inhibitor first then the fiberglass?

If the metal is pretty rigid you can grind to bare metal around the hole, recess the hole then apply foil tape over the hole THEN apply your long strand glass. Look at the process outlined HERE and if you have further questions let me know. Pictures are located about halfway down the linked page.

[joeschmo]

yahh that helps alot, but which filler out of those would you recommend also how long does it take to ship the pickelx 20 stuff?