Having left my recently acquired Fiero outside in the elements and, with an improperly sealed windshield and subpar cover tarp, water intruded inside and sat for several months. The not so surprising results are rusty floor pans that need to be dealt with. The only shining light of this all is that the rust did not fully perforate through (used a screw driver to poke around with literal solid results). It looks to be just some severe surface rust at this juncture and I am looking for some insight from others that have run across similar issues and what they did to remedy the situation. My tentative plan is to use a wire cup brush to remove all the loose rust and attain a solid foundation to paint over. Like many others have before, I plan on using POR-15 to seal things up.

I put fans inside the car to completely dry things out overnight so I should have a good starting point today. What are your thoughts? Based on the pictures, seen below, should I be OK with just removing the rust and painting the floor pans? The saving grace is that they passed the "screwdriver test" so I'm relatively confident I'll be OK.

Thanks in advance for the help.

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Project L67 Fiero

quote Originally posted by Jfrost: My tentative plan is to use a wire cup brush to remove all the loose rust and attain a solid foundation to paint over. Like many others have before, I plan on using POR-15 to seal things up.

Yep wire wheel the rust off and POR 15 should do it for ya. Go thru their process of the metal ready and prepp sprays as the bottles say. Since that rust didnt occur over a period of many years it should only be on top as you said.

[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 09-10-2014).]

I would get a wire brush on a drill (or similar item) and clean off as much as you can, then paint with POR15. If you find some holes, put down some fiberglass sheets/resin.

Thanks for the input guys, I'm going to try and tackle this this weekend. I'll be sure to post the results.

Clean of what you can, then use eastrwood or similar rust converter to stop the existing rust. Then seal with either por 15 or even plain ol' chassis black.

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Anything I might say is probably worth what you paid for it, so treat it accordingly!

Dave

www.ltlfrari.com

I've tried searching but have been unable to track down where to find the body plugs in the floor. A few of them will need replacing as they are worn and rusty looking.

I'm torn on repainting the entire floor boards given how spread out the rust/corrosion is or just do spot checks, this is mainly in regards to the rear sections where the damage is more spread out. Also, should I remove all the body sealer as well? I'm concerned rust could be hiding underneath and I'd really prefer only having to do this once.

I think I'd wire wheel the sealer down to see if there is rust under it, then put a new bead of it down even if the old is not all gone from down in the crevice. You'd probably have no issue spot painting the parts behind the front bolt ridge in my opinion.