Oh No... What now - UPDATED !!!!!

[rmace]

Rubbing compound won,t go through to the primer, only if you yous a buffing wheel on a grinder. Por 15 is good only if you get all of the rust, you would have to bead blast or sand blast to do that. The base for all metal is acid etch to keep the rust at bay from the factory, they dip it. It is nasty stuff to spray ask Tony, I didn,t acid etch my bus and the rust is coming through even with good primer and base coat clear coat paint. It,s alot of work but rubbing compound will bring the paint back and after a couple of trips the new paint will blend in. The Con Kid and his opinion

[phil]

I have a small but decent air compressor, a paint gun, and a air brush.  At one time I was pretty good with the gun. I did one whole side of my pickup truck once and it came out really good. I've done tailgates, trunk hoods and things like that too. But it has been a while I need to get my chops back.

It is getting to the point now where even if the paint job I do has flaws, it will look better that what I have now. It is the prep work that is a pain to do. Time consuming. I always get the urge to paint too soon. I have to be more patient.

As they say in King Fu, "the metal wll tell you when it is time to paint little grasshopper."

[phil]

OK, This is a before and after picture of my rubbing out the rust stains with polishing compound. You can still see traces of the rust stains. Perhaps if I used rubbing compound it would have gotten more out.  
I will get some Magquires paint cleaner in a plastic bottle and use that. It should remove the rest of the rust stains and bring up a shine. I've used it in the past and it is great for oxidized finishes.

Of course, all this doesn't do anything for that nasty brown crud spearding around the connection boxes.  That takes a different approach.

[phil]

Well, things looked worse than they were afterall. None of the rust showing was deep, mostly just surface stuff. There wasn't anyplace that you could poke through. Everything is pretty solid. I am pleased.
It took a lot of work but I got what you could call a 15.  The van looks perfect at 15 ft. Any closer and you can see the touchups and the little flaws.  I used rubbing compound, then polishing compound, and then a final wax.  I also used a very fine hoppy paint brush to fill in the dings and pits with touchup paint.  Like I said, a lot of elbow grease and work, but it looks great. Here are some before and after pix.





You can see the reflection of my tenants car on my van.

[MrLiMBO]

Looks great. Nice work.  Looks like new paint.  Did you buff the whole van? Its looks real good.  I'd buy it. =)  Wanna sell?   Wanna come fix the EV? I know mine is worse than that.  =)

[phil]

Thanks, It was a lot of work. I buffed the whole thing by hand, a half a panel at a time over a couple of days.

[rmace]

Looks great Phil it,s amazing what some elbow grease can do, nice job. Just remember rust never sleeps so attack it when you can, we shall over come. later The Con Kid