Truck Resto Rant

"Cancer" seems appropriate for the relentless rot that keeps coming back despite your best efforts to grind it away. Could an entire coating of spray bedliner do a better job? It's heavy, but that's the nature of "heavy duty".

Pictures?

Quote: Ayecarumba

"Cancer" seems appropriate for the relentless rot that keeps coming back despite your best efforts to grind it away. Could an entire coating of spray bedliner do a better job? It's heavy, but that's the nature of "heavy duty".

Pictures?

I'm very against the bed liner route. It's so thick and textured, you have no clue what's going on under it. So what happens 100% of the time is your truck looks beautiful, looks great, looks wonderful, and then you toss something in the bed that busts right through and is now laying on the ground. Surprise! All the metal is gone and all you have is a Rhino liner shell.

The same would happen with this. It'll protect from debris chipping the paint and allowing water in directly, but it'll still find a way. Hell, the "other side" of your linered metal, the inside, is still open metal. It'll just rust that way totally on the sly, until you open your door one day and it just falls off.

Took some pics but Photobucket's being incredibly stupid right now. I'll try later.

Edit: (GD Shockwave plugins ><)



This is the door I remade out of bondo. Obviously to get it smooth, right at the edge was ground to metal. Got a ton of cancer here.



This is the bondo dent, and same deal with the edges. It just eats right through =/



The surprise of the century. I assure you that's all sand; the bumper is totally unblemished (for now). Though the lower corner of the tailgate, which I had to hammer straight and then ground to bare metal, has also gone to pot.



The corner of the cab, which had rotted through and I rebuilt, has rotted right through again. More bondo for me soon. Huzzah -_-



And then the oddity. This is the front of my passenger door. In some thread, I bitched that after doing all the paint work, ice froze in my door jamb and upon opening it, I bent the leading edge of the door out and chipped all the paint off. You can see that leading edge shining silver. It's been that way for, oh, 14-16 months now. Not a fleck of orange on it.

Of course, right next to it, a sanded and painted area where the cancer has eaten back through -_-

So there you have it. I absolutely will continue and would suggest doing the spot treatment. You look at any '05 Silverado around here and the bed wells are totally gone, the bumpers are full of holes, even the emblems on the fenders are about to fall off as they hold the sand and water, which eats a hole right around them. I did lose the bottom of that one door and have a four finger hole in the corner of my cab, but the rest is solid as a rock. Spot grinding and giving it the Krylon touch has certainly extended its life by a large margin. But a full respray? Never again. At least not until they make a paint out of zinc.

I wonder if the new all aluminum bodied Fords will have the same problem?

Quote: Ayecarumba

I wonder if the new all aluminum bodied Fords will have the same problem?

Based on what I see at USPS, no. Aluminum rust is just a white powder that doesn't flake or chip. Once "rusted", it acts as a protective film. There is not one single hole or pit in any of our fleet. Look closely and they're marred and scratched all to hell and back. But from 10'? Washed and waxed they'd look off the showroom floor. Same for the interior which is totally raw, which we track rain and salt into all the time. Or refer back in this thread. Remember the heat shield under the bed? That's not even painted; it's raw metal and it's getting hammered by debris and water and salt every day. It's as solid now as it was 12 years ago.

I suspect F-150's will look fantastic 5-7 years from now. Not "better", I think there will be a jaw dropping difference. BUT, I do wonder about labor. You can't make an entire vehicle out of aluminum, most of it still has to be steel. And those two things bolted together don't do so well. There was no way to remove that heat shield save drilling it out and tapping a new bolt hole. If you have to do that anytime you need a fuel filter or fuel pump? And do it for all 12 huge bed bolts? Who knows how many "simple" jobs are now going to require fab skills.

Lol, had an '06 Ram as a parking lot partner today. Wasn't even dented, scratched, or anything to encourage this. This just happened from being in NY.



My way sucks, but it's way better =)

Living in Las Vegas we never even have to consider rust. I have lived here for the last 26 years and have never seen one dot of rust on any of my vehicles.

It amazes me that the geography makes that much difference.

Quote: DRich

Living in Las Vegas we never even have to consider rust. I have lived here for the last 26 years and have never seen one dot of rust on any of my vehicles.

It amazes me that the geography makes that much difference.

But how's your dashboards and the tops of the inside door panels? The vinyl acts like dried mud in the blazing desert sun.

Quote: Ayecarumba

But how's your dashboards and the tops of the inside door panels? The vinyl acts like dried mud in the blazing desert sun.

Yes, the sun is a killer for vinyl and leather in Vegas. Especially for the convertibles when you have the top down in the blazing summers.