Upper dash/cowl rust fix

[qwik1320]

Looking for advice:

I was poking around today and the more I looked at the upper dash where it is spot welded to the cowl the more I didn't like it. It looks like the car had a windshield leak at some point and the piece of foam that the factory put in between the panels got saturated and one thing led to another and...rust. I pulled off the upper dash panel and the metal is solid where spot welded, it's only the 1-2" behind that's rusty (underneath the dash panel, you don't even see it). I'd say 75% of the metal is still good, do you think cutting out pieces and patching the other 25% (mainly both ends and the very middle) would be a problem? What doesn't need replacing I'll grind as much of the rust off I can and then coat with rust converter then encapsulator.

[redss86]

If it were mine I would sand blast it, or have it sand blasted. It looks really bad in the pic. Do you have any closer pics of the bad areas. If you blast it you will probably uncover worse areas than you can visually see. Such as pin holes. Blast it, patch it, and weld through pime it and weld top piece back on.

Just my .02,
Joe

[Sparky67]

If it were mine I would sand blast it, or have it sand blasted. It looks really bad in the pic. Do you have any closer pics of the bad areas. If you blast it you will probably uncover worse areas than you can visually see. Such as pin holes. Blast it, patch it, and weld through pime it and weld top piece back on.

Just my .02,
Joe

Don't sand blast because the sand will go into places that you will never get out. Typically, I just take a wire wheel with a mini right angle die grinder. (Takes too long with electric drill and it was never designed for air tools, but works great). We have it setup, with a sharpe adjustable air pressure regulator from a paint gun. Anyway, you still need to where a plastic face mask, but it will clean the metal down to bare metal. Then just fix the metal that needs to be replaced. You will need to buy several different types of wire wheels, but it works far better than sand blasting.

Jeff

[qwik1320]

Thanks guys, I've been using a 3M paint/rust remover wheel and it's coming off pretty nice. There are only a few spots where it's definitely through. I'll keep grinding away at it with this then replace the bad sections. This is good practice since it's an area that won't be seen when the car is finished.