Posted by David Sherman on Friday, April 07, 2006 at 9:38PM :
I volunteered to fix the rusted out sides of side steps of the "trolley bus" we use for the mine tour (see link). The trolley has open sides and seats that face outward towards each side. There is one step the length of the trolley to get up to the seats. The riser of that step is rusted through in many places. Long ago somebody decided to put linoleum (?!?) on it, which did a great job of holding the moisture in and rusting the steel. It's been in a garage all winter but when I pulled the linoleum off today, it was still wet behind it.
Anyway, the upshot of it is that this riser which is about 10" high x 12' long and made of about 16 gage steel is rusted through in many places. None of the holes is bigger than dime-sized but there's probably a dozen of them overall, mostly in clusters. I've been at it with a wire wheel on a grinder, and scraper all afternoon so I'm pretty sure that's the extent of the damage. The right thing to do is cut out the whole rusted piece on each side and weld in a new one, but being a nonprofit organization we have no money. I'm hoping I can use some combination of fiberglass, bondo, boat resin, and perhaps a pop-riveted backing if needed to patch the holes.
Then I intend to prime it with a good thick coat of Rustoleum red oxide primer. We have a quart of the light yellow automotive paint left, which I'm hoping I can brush on over the Rustoleum, but if that doesn't work, I'll get some white rustoleum and tint it to be somewhat close to the light yellow color of the other parts of the bus. Since it never is right up against the other yellow parts, it should be good enough.
My question is, will bondo and/or boat resin stick to unprimed, well-brushed rusty steel? Will it stick to steel that's been primed with Rustoleum red oxide? Is there some other good way to do this that doesn't require welding or metal fabricating and will hold up? This isn't normal automotive body work since we don't care at all about it being smooth. If it looks like brush-painted rusty steel that will be fine. The main thing is to fill the holes, stop the rust, and get some paint on it. Any suggestions?
Dodge content: It has a slant 6 in it.
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