[kaw550]

Just picked up an '02 convertible for my wife to use as a summer car.

There is some rust bubbles above the right rear wheel. I had planned on having it fixed but she wants to leave it.

A friend mentioned having spray cans made at the local paint shop. I kind of laughed it off but got thinking. Do they work well enough to make an unnoticeable repair?

The plan would be to sandblast, prime and paint the area.

I have painted my last two project cars but never considered do a spot repair (especially with a rattle can).

[MARTINSR]

In the real world, forget about it, not if you want a nice job or anywhere near nice. Remember those rust bubbles are likely the tip of the iceburg and there will be much more when you dig into it being they are coming from the underside not rust on the TOP of the metal you are seeing.

Honestly, unless you are looking for a big project, let her drive it and enjoy it as it is no one else is picking it apart looking for flaws. They see a nice convertible is all they see.

Brian

[studeelover]

I have a similar situation with my vehicle. It is a 2003, with a few small rust bubbles under the paint around both rear wheel wells. I have 2 repair estimates, $1700. and $1100.

Forget it.

I'll sand the area, Mig any pinholes, rustmort, prime and touch up with the touchup gun.

It's a ten year old car, not a show car, and if it is visible after buffing, it's better than rust.

You should be able to get rattle cans with your color from an auto supply retailer.

[MARTINSR]

The other thought is, first impression, what was your first impression of that car? How long did it take you do see those rust bubbles? Is ANYONE going to look at that car long enough to see them?

OVERALL, what is the cars impression on the average person who will be viewing it?

There are times we go nuts over our stuff just because it's our stuff and we are nuts. We put passion in our cars we may be building because often "The journey is the destination" and I truly believe it, why is it we often have more projects than time? If we REALLY wanted to drive one of these cars we would get on it and finish it yet we collect three more.

My Rambler has a LOT of flaws, brush touched chips, rust bubbles and out and out rust thru on the bottom of the door. But the paint is shiny and from 20 feet outside of the rust thru on the bottom of the door no one sees a thing and they love the little car. They simply don't see that stuff, they have an impression of the car as a whole and they simply don't go looking for a reason NOT to like it, they look for more reasons TO like it.

I don't worry about where I park it, if I were go come back to the car to a big chip in the door yes it would tick me off but I would go brush touch it and forget about it minutes later never to think of it again.

If you WANT to repair this, by all means do so and we can walk you thru some repair. But in my opinion the rattle can spot paint is NOT the way to go. Keeping it small in a brush touch is MUCH more do-able in my opinion.

Brian

[John long]

This thread brings up an interesting question. If you do a spot repair on a SS paint job, do you dare blend the color and clear the panel? Will the fact you have clear on one panel cause the color to mis match? 3 years ago I repaired the damage on the rear of a Buddie's 41 Packard. After three attempts we got a good color match on the non-metallic dark blue paint and it looked very good but their is still that blend line if you really look for it. I have wondered many times what would have happened if I had cleared the blended area.

John L

[MARTINSR]

What happens most is that cleared panel doesn't fade anywhere as fast as the other panels so years later it looks almost like the day it was painted while the rest of the car looks horrible by comparison. Funny thing is if those panels hadn't been sprayed in a base clear you wouldn't hardly notice the fading on the original color if at all. But with the way it use to look sitting there there to compare, it looks like crap.

I have changed so much in how I look at my daily drivers, they look nice, very nice but they are MILES from perfect.

Brian

[John long]

Originally Posted by MARTINSR

What happens most is that cleared panel doesn't fade anywhere as fast as the other panels so years later it looks almost like the day it was painted while the rest of the car looks horrible by comparison. Funny thing is if those panels hadn't been sprayed in a base clear you wouldn't hardly notice the fading on the original color if at all. But with the way it use to look sitting there there to compare, it looks like crap.

I have changed so much in how I look at my daily drivers, they look nice, very nice but they are MILES from perfect.

Brian

That makes perfect sense. With that said, when dealing with a street rod or weekend driver that mostly lives in the garage is the blend line the lesser of the 2 evils?

John L

[kaw550]

It's not a show car by any means. I don't think I listed it but the car is an '02 saab 9-3 convertible.

We knew it had a couple of issues including the rust but we got a good price. I just about have the other issues resolved but the rust drives me nuts. My wife doesn't even see it.

I will post up a couple of pictures tonight looking for suggestions.

The car wont get driven over the winter. I doubt it will see much rain. In fact it is kept in the garage while our newer daily drivers are outside.

[kaw550]

Here are a couple of pictures. There are a couple of small bubbles at 12:00 and a larger section at 3:00 (that extends under the gray plastic trim)

[deadbodyman]

Originally Posted by studeelover

I have a similar situation with my vehicle. It is a 2003, with a few small rust bubbles under the paint around both rear wheel wells. I have 2 repair estimates, $1700. and $1100.

Forget it.

I'll sand the area, Mig any pinholes, rustmort, prime and touch up with the touchup gun.

It's a ten year old car, not a show car, and if it is visible after buffing, it's better than rust.

You should be able to get rattle cans with your color from an auto supply retailer.

Even if this kind of work is only a hobby that you enjoy doing the first thing you need is a compressor...if its not something you enjoy and are just too cheap to pay anyone you'll find out fast why its so expensive...once you find out how much the REAL paint costs you'll probably run down to the dollar store and buy something totally wrong and create an eye sore that shows the world just how cheap and untalented you are...Thats why she wants you to just leave it alone, she'll be too embaressesed to drive the car so just leave the rust alone ,dont draw attention to it..
.lets say your a talented and handy kind of guy that enjoys this kind of work and just have a lack of funds...Not just a cheepass that has no respect for anyones work but the work YOU do (like a politition) and you want to learn something..there IS a way you can do it ,it wont be very good but at least the color will be a closer match....You can go to an auto paint store with your paint code and have them mix some proper paint for you ...To apply the paint there are Co2 paint guns for touch up ,you put the paint in the bottom and like a rattle can push the top, it wont do a great job but it
ll be the best way to do it without a compressor and a paint gun....at the top of the 1/4 put a pinstripe and paint up to it so you dont have to blend the paint....
.....
Do your wife a favor LEAVE IT ALONE or break down and pay someone to do it right , OR buy some ( entry level ) equipment and enjoy this as a hobby and screw around with your own car.
A quart of paint even the cheapest low end auto paint will cost 50.00 ... you can get an entry level compressor and a paint gun new for about 200.00 at one of these chinese stores.it wont be a good one and it wont last long but it'll get the job done....
A 1000 - 1500.00 is cheap though at a body shop it takes a lot of talent even to get a passable job ...At my shop it would be a min. of 3500.00 for two 1/4s...If your too cheep or cant afford to spend a little on making your wife happy....You can always bring it to Maaco...at least they can do it for the price of the tools and materials you would spend and if they screw it up at least they'll screw it up FAST and she wont be driving around in rattle can primer spots for the rest of the cars shortend life....
This site is where Hot rodders and hobbiests (even pros) come to learn and better their talents and meet other guys with like intrests and the mere mention of rattle can work is disrespectful and has no place here ......
lesson #1
Now,If you have a genuine intrest in the work we'll help you all we can to do a fairly decent DIY job but first you have to have some tools not just an orbital sander and a drill......lesson #2
......
RULE # 1 Buying a car....
You find a car that you like the looks of but it needs some work..First,get a pro to look at it and give an estimate of what it would cost to do the repairs...Take the price of the car add the repairs to the cost then look up the value of the car...If the total exceeds the value dont buy it...I (try) only buy cars that are worth double what the repaired total costs are... Theres no sence wasting all that money and time on something with no return,even if you love doing the work...
Class dismissed.....dont forget to do your homework...

[kaw550]

I wouldnt necessarly consider myself a "cheapass".
It is our fouth car and as I mentioned in the first post, it is a summer toy.
I have the tools (although my paint gun is from HF) and a little experience but i know my limitations. Fading in silver is more than likely beyond my expertise.

If i could get a paint match out if a can it would remove a lot of variables. Thats what i was questioning.

We still have room in the budget to have it repaired but i was hoping to have it done for $500 to $1000.

[MARTINSR]

Ok, here is the cold hard facts for you from the mind of MARTINSR.

That rust is the tip of the iceburg and will require MUCH more than "store made spray paint" to fix. The magic words are "My wife doesn't even see it", let her drive the car with a smile on her face and forget about it. Not unless you want a major project that is going to require proper tools and time to do it right.

You want to think about doing this thing right, the first thing you need to do is get the car up in the air and look at the pinch welds around both wheel arches and the bottoms of the quarters and rockers. The rockers will likely be hidden by mouldings. But get a good look around and see if this is the ONLY rust like that on the car, my bet is it isn't. If you find this stuff all over, for goodness sakes forget about it! Let her drive it with a smile on her face and forget about it!

Brian

[studeelover]

Originally Posted by kaw550

Fading in silver is more than likely beyond my expertise.

It could be for a lot of us.

Take charge, start your leaning curve, try it now. It isn't as difficult as you think. Use what you have.

It will look better than when you started; the rust is gone.

If you keep this car, you may eventually want to repaint the entire car.

[MARTINSR]

I have a different look at things, make repairs where the odds of it being repaired is better than what you have, this is not the case. If you were a pro and could wham bam done kick it's butt, it may make sense but to try your first hand at blending and such, it won't look any better than it does now, only "different". That's what I always will tell customers who want to patch something or brush touch or something like that. It will simply look "different", not "gone". It may be a better "different" but it will NOT be fixed, and invisible.

If this car was from my area in sunny California there is a remote chance that the rust is localized to this area. Just the fact that it is over the whole wheel well pretty much blows that idea. This car has lived somewhere that rust is the norm, not the exception like here. My family's last "family truckster" (96 Windstar) had rust under it like this, severe surface rusted suspension components, rust at the pinch welds, that sort of thing. It was not from around here, that was clear. I got it for a good price and drove it just about 85K miles going to 29 of the states in these United States of America. It worked just fine never having touched that rust. COULD I have "repaired" it all, I guess so but the odds were that it wouldn't make one ant hill of difference so I chose to leave it and saved myself a lot of work and money and simply enjoyed the van.

The rust I am seeing on the Saab is pretty clearly just the tip of the iceburg. Right now you have color that matches, and a wife that doesn't see the flaw.

You try to learn on this car, you are in for some heartache. The learning curve on this one is steep, it isn't a little door ding in the middle of a panel, this baby is a toughie. Like I said, this rust is coming from the inside out, do we think for some reason this is the only rust on the car? Nope, if you don't see it, it IS under every panel on the car working on breaking thru just as this area did. So why fix this when first, it WILL fail very quickly being you aren't going to repair it right by replacing all that rusted metal, and two because it WILL be rusting thru somewhere else in the future, to what end is the question, a full ground up restoration?

The rust won't be "Gone" it will be hidden for a while is all you get from all your hard work. I am sorry, I have been in this business decades and in those decades I have learned that not every repair is worth it there are times when it is simply BEST to leave it. This APPEARS from what I see in these two photos not worth it. If this is very localized and there is no other rust on the car after a thorough inspection of the car then sure it would be a good idea maybe to fix it, but I don't believe this will be the case.


Brian

[jsm1847]

Listen man,
These gents are pros in the body shop dept. Don't take their harsh words too hard..... They are like alot of professionals- do it right or go home.
With that being said, I think you could do a decent patch/hack job of that rear panel, considering that you are doing just that. Considering you don't care the rust is there, and you just want it covered, it can be done fairly easy. It may or may not come out good, but you know that going in. I personally don't like patching over rust because it comes back up. The problem doesn't go away. You can't try to stop the rust, but that will depend on you.
A harbor freight HVLP will work fine. Not the best gun in the world, but folks use them all the time and get good results. You said you painted a couple cars before...
It is possible to blend a very small area. Hard, but possible. If you're gonna try, have your paint store match the color. Then try and blend color out on a body curve or edge. And reduce color each time you go out.