wire wheel rust

[Meleager7]

I have an old accord, that is disintegrating around a perfectly running little 4 cyl motor.

I hate car payments, so I think I want to push my current old vehicles right to the bitter end.......

What is better for removing bubbled up rust on rear wheel wells? Wire wheel in a variable speed drill? Or should I get a hand grinder?

After I get the surface rust off, i want to spray with rust converter and then crudely paint over.

Thoughts?

[markdem]

Angle grinder with a wire wheel. They are designed for applying pressure on that axis - drills arent. Just a cheap angle grinder will work fine. The more expensive ones have more torque which is nice if you really wanna push hard but youll probably be fine with a cheap one.

yes, a rust converter will work on a light layer of rust (after grinding) and you can paint over it to slow down further rusting

In my experience, bubbling paint usually means the metal is pretty far gone and youll probably encounter holes. And the rust always starts from the inside of body panels where wet, salty dirt accumulates.

Definitely possible. Not trying to put you off. Just weigh up the time spent vs money saved

[Glovebox Operator]

Agreed, drills with wire wheels aren't going to work as well as you'd like. Angle grinder everytime.

[JeeperCreeper]

I'm fighting the same battle. Between my Evo and my Jeep, I have a lot of rust to remove.

If you have a decent sized air compressor, I recommend a sand blaster as well. I just got one from Harbor freight for 30 bucks, and some 70 grit aluminum oxide. Honestly I picked up a decent 15 gal 200psi compressor from marketplace for 200 bucks and together, it does a great job at getting metal shiny again. Plus having the compressor means I can run a needle scaler, and also use air to blast loose chunks away.

[JeeperCreeper]

I was thinking, if you have rust in the wheel wells, its likely in other places too. Does your car have skirts or running boards along the bottom of the doors? If you do, there's definitely rot happening behind them.

I'm just trying to gauge how far you would need to go on this project, and if its truely worth doing. I also dont know where you're starting from as far as skills or tools go. Ive spent thousands of dollars on tools to get to the point where I could start this project. These tools are also being used for other projects constantly, so I didnt just aquire them all for one task. My car has rust that will need to be cut out and completely replaced. But, I also was extremely lucky to get a smoking deal on another entire Evo shell that I can cut pannels off to graft onto my car. I payed less for the shell delivered to my house than one rear quarter panel on Ebay.

My car can only increase in value, because its an Evo and its a desirable car. An old Accord doesn't have that same cult following. Sometimes you just need to figure out if its worth doing all the body work, or just look for another Accord that has a better body but needs an engine.

When I was working in a shop, there was a customer with a Honda Pilot that had rust everywhere. I rebuilt the drivers side rear for him, and I told him the passenger side wouldn't last another year, but he declined. Guess who was back 6 months later. It was over $1k worth of work the first time, and I think he might have payed 3k for the car to start with.

I guess it just depends on how deep the rust has gone. Just some food for thought. Either way, I hope you get everything figured out.

[Jordan]

It will look worse after you're done grinding away than if you'd left it alone, in my experience.