RUST! Have I goofed?

[ourtravelingsouls]

Hi there people. I have just about had it with trying to sift through information on getting rid of rust. We painstakingly took a big metal wire brush attached to an angle grinder and got up all the loose rust. It was a lot. Our bus is an 88 International.

So with that done, we spent about 4 hours trying to clean the floor as much as possible. We had to carry water and soap out to our bus and we made sure we wiped up all the soap as much as possible.

We applied a layer of Corroseal to the bus and let that sit for 24 hours. We came back to the bus the next day to find that all of the rust spots had rust still showing through, indicating contamination according to the Corroseal. I was heated, disturbed and hard-headed. So I went ahead and applied a second coat of Corroseal. Granted this was about 24 hours after the first coat. I was just bewildered that ALL of the rust spots were contaminated. I just could not believe it.

Anyways. Upon watching the circa 1980's instructional videos of Corroseal YouTube, it looks like we may have goofed in that it was starting to dew just as we finished rolling the Corroseal on.

tl;dr - We tried applying Corroseal to our rusty floors and it looks like the rust is still showing through. We don't believe that every square inch of the rust was contaminated and I applied a second coat anyways.

We also have Rust-Oleum. Can we just get up all the Corroseal and just use that instead? Thank you for reading if you got this far and we really appreciate your insightful answers.

 

[spenceronehalf]

The Rust We Don't See

I also spent a lot of time fighting rust inside the bus: grinding, scraping, sanding, treating, replacing metal, etc. Today I was under the bus doing some work ... and boy is there a lot of rust underneath.

I'm just saying that there is the rust we see and then the rust we like to ignore. Only so much can be scrubbed and scoured away ... the rest, I guess, we have to live with.

 

[New2Skool]

Hello there,
I once posted a thread here called the Red Menace.
I hear and feel your frustration and pain.
My bus has always been a northern minnesota bus.
Humid summers, bitterly cold winters mixed with seasons of salted roads, slush and horrible rust conditions.

In short, I cut off the enter backend of my bus' body. Rear doors, windows, everything was removed and remade in my garage. The floor was horrible, I had to buy 10g 1/8th inch sheets cut them out and replace sections. Then wire wheel the feeling right out of my arms working on the floor. The kind of muscle trauma you can relate to, picking up our cup of coffee two days later and shaking half of it out before it ever hits your lips.

The best solution I found after trying so much was a gallon size rust convertor I found at an auto store. I am sorry but, I cant remember the name of it. I put it in a garden hand pump sprayer and coated my bus from top to bottom and side to side. The fluid itself was a blue-ish color and it was designed to be a soak for tools or parts and it worked very well in that aspect. I tested it on the battery tie down bar, as soon as it was submerged it bubbled, powder appeared and a few hours later the metal was black. Five seconds with a wire wheel and it was beautiful.

It was a plastic gray bottle.
Anyway, I sprayed that everywhere and would come back the next day with mask and protective gear and wire wheel the living **** out of it. It worked very well, it left bright bare metal and stopped the rust from further pitting of the metal. Then I bought two gallons of an industrial metal primer from menards and hand painted it on thick. Got a nice contact high from the fumes a few times.

It has been perfect since, no rust, no issue, stable and the subfloor foam glue sticks like a dream come true. As mentioned above, I even slithered under the bus and sprayed a few coats of the rust convertor to build up a scale and it helped a great deal. A few coats of that horrific smelling chemical cocktail and a few quick runs with a wire wheel and I was in business.

That is my suggestion and hope it helps or at least gives a few ideas.

 

[Rusty-SKO]

Ospho? Perhaps?

 

[EastCoastCB]

Corroseal is an expensive mess, imo.
I use Ospho, its cheap.
But the best rust converter I've tried is Rustoleum's Rust Reformer. NOT the spray, the brush on stuff.

 

[New2Skool]

It wasnt ospho, I think it was a rust oleum.
I got it from the auto zone here.
It was cheap like $10-15 a gallon.
I never tried the paint on but, would like too.

 

[brokedown-SKO]

The problem I see is people get in and cut out all the rust when what they should really be doing is using rust converter. Rust converter needs the rust to still be there! If you remove it, you have thin spots and holes etc and those surfaces need a protecting layer before they pick right up rusting again.

 

[ourtravelingsouls]

So we ended up doing more sifting through the internets. Here is one of the things we found:

https://garage.eastwood.com/eastwood-chatter/encapsulator-vs-converter/

It does a pretty good job of telling you what to use based on what kind of rust you have. At this point, I'm pretty sure we made the mistake of taking off too much rust. And then, we applied the Corroseal almost at the dew point. As it was starting to dew as we finished.

I came back the next day almost 24 hours after the first coat and applied more to the top layer. That seems to have taken better and actually converted the rust to the nice black color that you are supposed to get from Corroseal.

Now upon doing this research, we see that maybe the amount of rust did not call for Corroseal, but instead we would have been just fine using Rust-Oleum Rusty Metal Primer - 7769.

So with Corroseal acting also as a primer for paint, we are going to paint our Rust-Oleum over out layer of Corroseal.

Hopefully this helps some people out there with rust problems and what to do about it.

 

[Pizzajones05]

Are these methods okay to use under the bus on mechanical parts? I'm looking at a bus from jersey that looks pretty good, definitely some rust but it seems more surface and is sporadic not covering everything. Before I consider buying i want to make sure I know what steps to take to prevent future issues. It is unlikely that I will drive in any snow and salt conditions so I don't know if that makes a difference or not, can you just leave the rust thats there if it's minor, or will it get worse no matter what??

 

[Jaybz]

Are these methods okay to use under the bus on mechanical parts? I'm looking at a bus from jersey that looks pretty good, definitely some rust but it seems more surface and is sporadic not covering everything. Before I consider buying i want to make sure I know what steps to take to prevent future issues. It is unlikely that I will drive in any snow and salt conditions so I don't know if that makes a difference or not, can you just leave the rust thats there if it's minor, or will it get worse no matter what??

Pizza- Where in Jersey is the bus? If it’s local I could potentially swing by and get some better info.

 

[musigenesis]

Are these methods okay to use under the bus on mechanical parts? I'm looking at a bus from jersey that looks pretty good, definitely some rust but it seems more surface and is sporadic not covering everything. Before I consider buying i want to make sure I know what steps to take to prevent future issues. It is unlikely that I will drive in any snow and salt conditions so I don't know if that makes a difference or not, can you just leave the rust thats there if it's minor, or will it get worse no matter what??

You have any pics? Jersey buses are generally pretty badly rusted. If the rust is on the outside of the body (like around the wheel wells and on the back) then that's bad news since it will have started on the inside. Rust on the chassis parts is not such a big deal.

Mainly, though, you're not going to know the rust situation until you get the seats out and the plywood floor up.

 

[Pizzajones05]

Pizza- Where in Jersey is the bus? If it’s local I could potentially swing by and get some better info.

Thank you so much for that offer. It says jersey city on the craigslist ad, I attached the map image they shared. Lemme know if thats close or not.

 

[Jaybz]

My commute takes me within 10 mins of there nearly every day. I wouldn’t mind taking a look.

 

[musigenesis]

Thank you so much for that offer. It says jersey city on the craigslist ad, I attached the map image they shared. Lemme know if thats close or not.

PM me the link and I'll take a look at the pics. I already own one rusty bus, ain't gonna poach anybody else's.

 

[Jaybz]

Do you have a couple pictures of the worst spots on yours, for reference? I’ve got a plenty of experience assessing rust on most things other than a school bus, so info on the specifics of these things would help me provide the best assessment. I’ll augment my lack of bus-specific experience with plenty of pictures.

 

[musigenesis]

Do you have a couple pictures of the worst spots on yours, for reference? I’ve got a plenty of experience assessing rust on most things other than a school bus, so info on the specifics of these things would help me provide the best assessment. I’ll augment my lack of bus-specific experience with plenty of pictures.

I assume this was directed to me? Here's an album of pics from my bus: https://imgur.com/a/yisoA9i. The first half or so is pics of the inside, which aren't visible on any bus until the seats and floors are out. The rest of the pics are of the underside and the outside and are a worst-case scenario of what you'll see on this Jersey bus.

The big signs of doom are the rust around the rear fenders and those two vertical marks on either side of the fender (this is from the skirt supports there rusting through from the inside), and the rust on the back door and back wall and bumper. Basically, almost any rust on the outside of the body is bad news, much worse than it appears, since it's starting on the inside and rusting its way out. Underside is almost the opposite, where things can look truly catastrophic but clean up to show very little actual loss of material thickness.

 

[Native-SKO]

Musigenesis' build thread is a testament to what can be done about rust.

 

[angelicadevries21]

Indiana rust

I’m assuming this is a no go? Please weigh in, thanks!

 

[musigenesis]

I’m assuming this is a no go? Please weigh in, thanks!

Yeah, that's in really bad shape. It's comparable to (or worse than) my bus - you can check out the second post in my build thread to see what that looks like once the seats and floors are up. Unless you want to be forced into becoming a fabricator (or paying out the wazoo to hire one), pass on this bus.

 

[angelicadevries21]

Thank you!!