Rust Repair: Car Restoration Tips

You consider yourself a car aficionado, but the windtunnel designs these days just plain don’t give you the thrill of a ’57 Thunderbird or a classic Corvette. Even the manufacturer redesigns of old standbys such as the Charger and the Mustang can’t compare to the originals. What you need is your own classic, but unless you’re ready to spend a fortune for one which has already been making the rounds at auto shows and race tracks, you will have to do some work yourself. The first thing to do is find the body of a car you consider worth the extensive work involved to restore it. Then you let Expert Village show you exactly how to bang, grind, sand, and patch it back into showroom shape.

In this series of car restoration videos, our body shop owner and hot rod designer shows you how to restore the exterior of that old classic car back into like-new condition. He demonstrates ways to expose rust, grind it away and then repair the body section which rusted. You may find that you will have to replace a whole piece or panel of the body if the rust has really gotten out of control. Expert Village can help you do that too. Our expert will show you how to use a plasma cutter, welder and metal shrinking tool to design, shape, smooth and weld a new part to cover up the old rusty one. Of course, we want to stay safe on your remodeling adventures, so we include a video clip on keeping your work space safe and clean as well as one that focuses on welding safety.

"Hi! I'm Doug and I work with twenty great guys in St. Louis at Doug Jenkins Custom Hot Rods and we are going to do some work for you today on Expert Village. Today we are going to talk about a rust repair on 1990 Mazda Miata. The Miata is a real good car. They are light, fast, they don't break. Everybody seems to like these cars. In the winter where we live, here in St. Louis, they use a lot of salt to melt the snow to make the roads safe. This car has suffered a little bit of rust, as you can see here. The car was originally manufactured with drain holes underneath to keep the water flowing out of the rocker and fender areas so that the water didn't build up and collect dirt and moisture and cause this kind of rust. This car has no other visible rust on it. The customer has asked us to fix this one spot, so we are going to cut this ugly piece out that you see, we are going to treat the insides for rust with real good chemicals that we'll show you. And we are going to weld a new piece and paint it. We are going to reproduce this rough texture on it, paint it and make the guy happy."