We've had our P5 for 3 weeks now and when I was detailing it a week or two ago I noticed some serious rust in the engine bay and then some surface rust forming under the side skirts towards the rear of the car. After reading how many of these cars are having rust issues I decided to try to get ahead of the game in some of the problem areas and ordered some POR15 to help seal this stuff up and hopefully prevent it from spreading. For those of you who don't know what POR15 is, they are a company that offers various products to help stop rust from spreading and they are VERY popular in the classic car community. This stuff came highly recommended Here is the kit I ordered:
http://www.por15.com/SUPER-STARTER-KIT/productinfo/SSKB/
To get started I popped the engine bay and removed as much rust as I could. It was BAD. It was completely rusted through in an area or two. This image was taken AFTER I cleaned the area and removed most of the rust. This was taken during the prepping process so it's a lot cleaner than it was before:
I knew I was in for a hell of a battle and was pretty upset when I saw all of this. What was the culprit of all of it?
This bastard. The whole outside edge of the plate wasn't sealed very well so it was rusting through there. I'm not sure of this is on all of the cars or what, but it's the culprit for all of our rust issues. When this image was taken I was cleaning and scrubbing it so I could get a good seal from the underside as well.
Here is the engine bay getting cleaner. After a few more rounds of prepping and scrubbing I was ready to apply the POR15 that will hopefully save this engine bay!
As you can see the POR15 is now applied. Yup, they make it in silver so it's not too bad to look at! After this was applied I wanted to seal up the areas that had completely rusted through. What I decided to use was a product used to seal holes in exhaust. It's a tar-like product that you heat up and then apply. Once it is heated and applied it's really not going ANYWHERE. Here you can see me getting this started below:
The black is the exhaust stuff. I ended up covering the entire area with it and then painted over it to make it look silver again and to try to seal up the edges a little as well. Here is the finished engine bay:
MUCH better don't you think? Now, for the culprit in the fender well that caused this whole problem.
I sealed the edges as much as I could with this stuff. I then decided to go a step further and apply the same exhaust sealer around the entire thing to ensure that water couldn't get through and start the whole rust process all over again:
Once done I painted over the ENTIRE area to make sure water didn't have a chance to make it in anywhere!
I plan on getting some black rust protectant and coating the whole area so it looks a little more at home in the fender area.
Area one completed!
http://www.por15.com/SUPER-STARTER-KIT/productinfo/SSKB/
To get started I popped the engine bay and removed as much rust as I could. It was BAD. It was completely rusted through in an area or two. This image was taken AFTER I cleaned the area and removed most of the rust. This was taken during the prepping process so it's a lot cleaner than it was before:
I knew I was in for a hell of a battle and was pretty upset when I saw all of this. What was the culprit of all of it?
This bastard. The whole outside edge of the plate wasn't sealed very well so it was rusting through there. I'm not sure of this is on all of the cars or what, but it's the culprit for all of our rust issues. When this image was taken I was cleaning and scrubbing it so I could get a good seal from the underside as well.
Here is the engine bay getting cleaner. After a few more rounds of prepping and scrubbing I was ready to apply the POR15 that will hopefully save this engine bay!
As you can see the POR15 is now applied. Yup, they make it in silver so it's not too bad to look at! After this was applied I wanted to seal up the areas that had completely rusted through. What I decided to use was a product used to seal holes in exhaust. It's a tar-like product that you heat up and then apply. Once it is heated and applied it's really not going ANYWHERE. Here you can see me getting this started below:
The black is the exhaust stuff. I ended up covering the entire area with it and then painted over it to make it look silver again and to try to seal up the edges a little as well. Here is the finished engine bay:
MUCH better don't you think? Now, for the culprit in the fender well that caused this whole problem.
I sealed the edges as much as I could with this stuff. I then decided to go a step further and apply the same exhaust sealer around the entire thing to ensure that water couldn't get through and start the whole rust process all over again:
Once done I painted over the ENTIRE area to make sure water didn't have a chance to make it in anywhere!
I plan on getting some black rust protectant and coating the whole area so it looks a little more at home in the fender area.
Area one completed!