Rust repair requires repaint, please give opinions/suggestions

[greatwhite]

Hi all.

My 98 has progressed far enough that is needs some touching up to keep it from turning into a rust bucket in a couple years.

No holes or such, but rusties are taking hold and it's time to tackle them before it gets worse. Mostly stone chip damage at this point. Biggest offender can be seen here on the doors:



Through the paint, just through the e-coat and starting in on the parent metal.

The bumpers are also breaking out on the chrome where I altered the front and rear bumper.

Thing is, I can't swing a full paint job and the stock color is hard to get a hold of here and super expensive. I ordered two small cans to touch up the roof where a snow goose hit it (don't ask...) and it cost me 14 bucks a can...

Essentially, they want your first born son and the RH "dangler" that produced him for a couple 500g cans......it would be cheaper to paint the whole truck than use rattle cans to touch up the bottom (the bedsides need some attention also)

So I'm tossing around ideas on how to fix up the rusties and give it a nice protective coat that doesn't look too cheap.

Here's one that is just a quick and dirty photochop:





Basically, a darker grey on the the bottom (automotive style paint) and color match the bumpers. MOre of a metalic type paint than the simple photoshop rendering. Then the chrome strip in the rub strip get's a splash of red to tie it together better. That red is kinda bright, it will be closer to the red you can see in the bedside "4X4" decal.

I plan to keep the rub strip, it sees heavy "combat engagements" daily around here. People just don't care about others property anymore.

Thoughts, opinions or better ideas anyone?

[greatwhite]

Maybe this will help, variation on these themes:

[DmaxMaverick]

How about a bed liner coating (Line-X, Rhino, etc.) on the lower? I've seen a few with this. They aren't shiny like paint, but neither is the paint after a few years.

[sctrailrider]

Yea, X2.... you could go down to the metal getting the rust gone then the bed liner stuff....

[trbankii]

Just what I was going to recommend with using the bedliner. I've seen a number of people do it. Here is a photo I found on the web.

[greatwhite]

Good suggestions, but I'm not really hot on the bedliner look.

[Dvldog8793]

Howdy
IMHO....the two tone stuff looks great with out any red or other accents.
Also....in Minnesota we have this wonderfull road salt that returns our vehicles to mother earth in short order. What I have seen with your model truck is that the bottom edge door rust is not normally due to the road chips. There is a rubber seal on the bottom edge of the door, this seals the salt and raod scrum into the bottom crimp edge of the door. It also seals out most attmepts at washing out the salt. By the time the door look like yours the rust has infiltrated into the weld/crimp seam on the bottom edge and really is impossible to get out. kida like the cab corners and box fenders. Once we start to see the rust it is normally too late.
Good luck!

[greatwhite]

Done:



Next on the appearance agenda will be some PY0 rims and paint for the topper.