Minor floor rust repair

Here's a consideration that hasn't yet been mentioned. JHZR2 is in New Jersey, which eliminated its safety inspections for most private vehicles some years ago. For the rest of you with a similar problem in other states, that kind of rust could be a real problem during an inspection. In Virginia, floorpan perforation as JHZR2 has is an automatic fail. (So is frame perforation.)

Pennsylvania recently tightened its inspection rules. There any body panel rust-through, even on a front fender, now fails inspection.

Unfortunately, if that were my truck and I lived in Virginia, I'd lean toward junking it because of the inspection and repair issue here. Keep us posted on your progress, JHZR2.
 
Here's a consideration that hasn't yet been mentioned. JHZR2 is in New Jersey, which eliminated its safety inspections for most private vehicles some years ago. For the rest of you with a similar problem in other states, that kind of rust could be a real problem during an inspection. In Virginia, floorpan perforation as JHZR2 has is an automatic fail. (So is frame perforation.)

Pennsylvania recently tightened its inspection rules. There any body panel rust-through, even on a front fender, now fails inspection.

Unfortunately, if that were my truck and I lived in Virginia, I'd lean toward junking it because of the inspection and repair issue here. Keep us posted on your progress, JHZR2.
Sometimes I wonder if such regulations just support sham repairs. Look on YouTube for the number of repairs that just use some bondo and aluminum screen.

I am skill limited, and don’t have a MIG welder, so that doesn’t work in my favor. But I’m going to give it a try with real metal and impact rated epoxy. If a MIG welder that was half decent didn’t cost me $500+ (maybe more considering gas and whatnot), I’d try it. I’m all for spending money on tools but I’m not sure I’ll get so much use out of this to justify it. Bummer a wire flux welder can’t be used.

I banged around under there again yesterday, most everything is very firm. It really is just perforation. OE had the trim just screwed through the floorboard. Those holes were target spots for rust when there was no vapor barrier. It all went from there.

I think with the high end epoxy and ability to get the underside to bright metal, the perforation will be fixed and the floorboard stronger/stiffer than originally. Here’s to hoping.

There is one soft spot on the rocker, I’m thinking to fabricate my own patch, get a sheetmetal flange tool, then grind paint in the strong areas and epoxy it.

The greatest benefit of these panel epoxies is that they are chemically designed to be corrosion inhibiting, so that makes things more secure I think...
 
For reference since OSPHO is being discussed/used here, it should be noted that it has toxic dichromates in it, albeit very low quantities.

Skyco provided me the following:
OSPHO does contain Dichromate but when formulated, only has a content of 0.005% and any materials used that have under 3% content do not have to be listed.
 
You don't want to enclose any rust. The general idea is to convert all the rust (iron oxide) to a stable form. I assume phospho is a product that does that.

Por-15 metal prep works quite well. I apply it much longer than the instructions suggest and you do eventually get a stable grey surface.

I've also used Naval Jelly with good results.
 
I had a rust perforation on the passenger side front floor of my '63 Chevy II. Being a penniless student at the time and needing the car, I applied a large fiberglass patch (12 to 18" X 12 to 18") on the inside surface and left the outside alone. I drove that car for several years and gave it to my nephew who drove it for a few more years. He sold it and I saw the car running around a decade or so later so my patch seems to have worked out, or bought time anyway.

But a Chevy II was heavily built so that approach may not have universal application.
 
I had a rust perforation on the passenger side front floor of my '63 Chevy II. Being a penniless student at the time and needing the car, I applied a large fiberglass patch (12 to 18" X 12 to 18") on the inside surface and left the outside alone. I drove that car for several years and gave it to my nephew who drove it for a few more years. He sold it and I saw the car running around a decade or so later so my patch seems to have worked out, or bought time anyway.

But a Chevy II was heavily built so that approach may not have universal application.
My father had a Chevy II of about that year that he could see the floor through the floorboards.

You don't want to enclose any rust. The general idea is to convert all the rust (iron oxide) to a stable form. I assume phospho is a product that does that.

Por-15 metal prep works quite well. I apply it much longer than the instructions suggest and you do eventually get a stable grey surface.

I've also used Naval Jelly with good results.

Ospho is exactly that. Very low pH, phosphoric acid with surfsctants and dichromate (thus the note above). I too have used the POR product, but prefer ospho.
 
I had a rust perforation on the passenger side front floor of my '63 Chevy II. Being a penniless student at the time and needing the car, I applied a large fiberglass patch (12 to 18" X 12 to 18") on the inside surface and left the outside alone. I drove that car for several years and gave it to my nephew who drove it for a few more years. He sold it and I saw the car running around a decade or so later so my patch seems to have worked out, or bought time anyway.

But a Chevy II was heavily built so that approach may not have universal application.

I've also seen much more ghetto ultra budget floor repairs than that. Many years ago my brother worked for a commercial roofing and flooring company. I watched him repair a buddy's AMC Javelin's missing floors with a heavy-duty torch down roofing material. He also did an old early 70s Monte Carlo's floor that way. As far as I know, they held up until something else took them out.
 
Well, I’ve worked a bit here and there, being light late these days helps a ton amidst other demands for time.

I got a patch as best as I could for my skill level. Maybe I should have learned to MIG weld. That’s probably the right thing to do, but it’s an $800 investment for something I may do a few times. There were also too many other firsts, like fabricating sheetmetal, which were in conflict fir my time. So at least for now doing this was a best bet.

Starting point, just the holes in the floor


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I knew I needed to get to bright metal, so I started the dirty process of doing so. Ran a vacuum to help with dust, probably should have run a fan.
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Kept working a bigger and bigger area. Decided I would go with one monolithic piece for this vs multiple small patches.

Used templates to decide the shape, then cut 22ga.

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I let it get bigger to cover more holes. Had to grind more to bright metal accordingly. Started to shape the part to the different abs compound curves I was trying to fit.

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Epoxy time, but first degrease with acetone. All surfaces.
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I used a 3M impact resistant epoxy, fwiw. Not sure if/that it makes a difference but I thought it was maybe better.

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Before installing the static mixer, the two parts of the epoxy need to be primed. I was interested to see that it was silver.

3M recommends to coat each mating part, then to add a new bead on one of the parts to have excess for squeeze out.

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Anyone care to note the stupid mistake I made?

The epoxy is designed to be rust inhibiting too, so that’s good.

Finally got it up cinched up with #6 self tapping screws. They generally went in easily.

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This was the one gap, which will seal sfterfull cure from the inside.
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I added more epoxy at the seams to really act like a sealant. I saw some nice I squeeze out in various spots.

I didn’t remove the old metal. I think it’s for the best to have more overlap, since the epoxy adds corrosion protection and adhesion.

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At some point in the future I’ll apply por patch over the inside.
 
Subscribed. Thank you for sharing. Starting to approach "Pablo's epic rock story" status.
 
Looks very very good JHZR2...

If I ever come up that way... I could get ya to fix my lady's Camry...

Of course I'd bring the grill and cook whatever you would like for dinner... :)
 
Might be a good time to sell it for 12k(lol) crazy car market right now.
It has crossed my mind… but I’ve loved the gen 2 Ram diesels since I was a teenager. So this fits a special place for me… and the fact that mine is big and dented and loud makes it better.
 
I had ground off as much rust as I could, then applied ospho and rinsed it before. Then I applied POR patch to the topside. Will probably apply more as time goes by, and paint also with ACE rust stop paint. Also used this on the underside where there were some still-bright sheet metal screws showing that Inhadnt epoxied over suffiently.

All the small holes near the patch were filled from the top and bottom to fully close. Any one wasn’t larger than the shaft diameter of a #6 screw. Now they’re gone.

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The initial pics in post #69 were making me a little nervous but the after pics look so much better. Good work!
 
The initial pics in post #69 were making me a little nervous but the after pics look so much better. Good work!
There were some holes but the metal underneath easily sanded bright. It was all too firm/strong for me to break it or bend it easily. So long as I didn’t screw up the epoxy, it should be good. I’m happy that the epoxy adds corrosion resistance so it’s all actually far better than before.
 
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