I bought a 1984 military blazer and there's a lot of body rot. I'm not sure what the best to way to combat this is.



I got a sander and knocked down a lot of the bubbled paint and rust off of it, and have decided to rivet aluminum sheet metal around the wheel wells to prevent further rot. The rest of the body will be sanded, sprayed with a rust prohibitive and will get a new paint job. Also, as of yesterday, I completely removed the running boards off the truck.

What else is there to do ? Mechanically this thing is in beautiful shape.

 

Worse case scenario is that you will have to grab some fenders from a Pick N Pull.

You probably won't truly know the extent of the damage until you sand everything down to metal, you may still have good metal under the rust... or not. You can try poking your finger through the rust and if it goes through then you may have a problem. lol

 

I know it's not for everyone, but what I usually do is buy a replacement panel and then mould it. Then you can make a fibreglass replacement panel and sell the steel panel. Drill out the spotwelds, remove the old panel, epoxy the fibreglass panel in place and finish. Voila, if you clean it up underneath and undercoat the heck out of it, you'll never have to fix it again.

Here's a link to some photos I took as as I did a quarter panel repair on my Blazer. Just go down to the Lower Front Quarter Panel Mould folder.

Pictures of the finished job are in the QTR INSTALL folder.

http://s284.photobucket.com/home/b1heqh54/allalbums

 

sand blasting easiest way to remove rust. there are also rust neutralizing products.