Rust Free Steel

Next Winter plan on refinishing my Custom 4 x 4 buper as it has started to rust. After I grind down to bare metal, what is the best way to treat the steel prior to piming and painting?

If you have ground away all the rust, you don't treat the steel first, you prime with a zinc phosphate primer.

If you think there's rust still hiding in the pores of the metal, wipe down with OSPHO before priming.

There is also an acid jelly we use in aviation to treat steel before painting. Its a passivation type acid. Its called pasi-jelly. Dont know where you would get it commercially though. Good luck Jeff CamoXJeep

Use Titanium... HAHAHA

There are two ways you can go. You can clean all the rust off or you can use a paint that will simply stabilize the rust and keep it from rusting. I tend to do a little of both. I clean as much as I can then stabilize. POR-15 paint is the best product but as far as I know they don't make it in a rattle can. Eastwood has their own formulation of a similar paint and they have it in the rattle can. It isn't cheap. It is $20+ per can, but worth it if you have a rust prone application like a bumper. The lesser cost alternative is Hammerite. It does a good job of stabilizing the rust, and I like the look of it. It also gets pretty darned hard.

For cleaning steel, I use a slightly diluted mixture of Muratic Acid, then wash it well and neutralize it with an alkaline. For neutralizing, I use Castrol Super Clean degreaser. It kills two birds with one stone. It kills the acid and gets rid of any oils or grease.

Have fun.

Por 15 is good stuff just make sure you use there marine clean (degreaser) and metal redy ( puts down zinc phosphate)

old_man said:

For cleaning steel, I use a slightly diluted mixture of Muratic Acid, then wash it well and neutralize it with an alkaline. For neutralizing, I use Castrol Super Clean degreaser. It kills two birds with one stone. It kills the acid and gets rid of any oils or grease.

Have fun.

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Thankyou gentlemen. However what is Muratic Acid? It sounds like POR-15 is the way to go.