On my 26 model t I have a mix of patina and rust. I like the survivor look. What can I use in my old paint ? People have said Lin seed wd40 but which is better and easier? Also one guy said knock off paint and clear it with rattle can. What do you all say? Thanks Jerry
I would just leave it alone. You won't get it to look good without stripping and repainting it, after doing a lot of bodywork. Oil over old paint or rust looks really silly to me....
The problem I see with the patina look (and this is just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt) is that folks tend to overdo it and then throw two gallons of clear at it. Gloss clear over rust and flaking paint just looks dumb. I've seen laser straight body panels with surface rust and paint chips sealed under high gloss clear (there's one particular mid-60s Chevy C10 pickup I've seen that comes to mind). If you're going to the trouble of beating bent rusted metal out then clearing it, why not add the extra steps of priming, sealing, and painting? And the guys that do fake patina (they are artists in their own right) rarely get the look of a "survivor" right. They all tend to look overdone. Folks do the same thing when they are "weathering" a scale model. "Less is more" wins every time, I suppose. We have to remember that true "survivor" cars still have original paint, albeit thin in some places. If you absolutely want to go the patina route, I would clean the hell out of it, use a satin or flat clear to protect and encapsulate the the metal and what's left of the paint. You are going to be really pissed if you use WD-40 and ever hope to paint the car down the road. You may end up with fisheyes and all other sorts of nastiness from residues you're not going to be able to scrub out of pitted or flaking rust. I suppose linseed oil would be a better approach than WD-40, but will still give you issues if you want to paint the car down the road. Oh, and if you're going for a cleared over patina look, please don't clear over sanded bondo. Remove that shit. A dent is way better looking than cleared, sanded bondo (again, remember to employ that grain of salt to this post because I tend to talk a lot.). Just my two cents, and if you ask my friends, I generally tend to talk out of my ass most of the time.
I personally don't like to clear over rust. It makes it look wet and doesn't stop the rust. You should post a picture of what you have. Depending on how far gone your paint is will determine the treatment.
I’m out on the clear. Clean and polish. Ive used CLR to clean off rust stains from paint. Decades old paint after cleaning and polishing
Linseed oil works well. Just be aware of storage/fire issues with it. I haven’t had a problem with it
^^THIS^^ A pile of linseed oil soaked rags will spontaneously combust and burn your place down toot sweet.
I am building a model a pickup. It has more light rust than paint and the required rot on the bottom requiring structural repair. I am going to just leave it for now and the patches are getting rattle canned or brushed flat black followed by a dusting of red oxide. Makes a good 20 footer.
You might try Gibbs Oil. You can paint over this later, making it much better than WD 40 (which you can't paint over). Gibbs is what the bare-metal guys use. Apply every couple months.
What @anthony myrick posted CLR , and polish it . Or linseed oil I would not put anything else on body panels ( especially WD40). That you cannot easily remove when you decide to paint it .
If you *truly* like the survivor look, then just clean it, polish any remaining paint, and have fun driving it. Or go the other way and give it a proper paint job. Clear-coating rust & patina is for poseurs.
CLR, 2000 grit and polishing Most of the ugly was rust stains the CLR removed The blue was hiding underneath
clean, then clean again then polish. you'd be surprised what you get out of it. that all is stating that you actually have enough paint left to do that. Post a pic and we can tell you what direction will be the one fraught with the least pain. here is an example of mine. Mostly original 39 paint, polished with wool buffing pads on a variable speed polisher. whole bunch of info in my 39 build thread if you are interested. The first pic really doesn't show how bad the paint was when i started. The entire front of the front fenders was covered with surface rust from thousands of chips in the paint.
This is great for a car that has intact paint still, over most of it. But for something with areas missing paint, with real surface rust, polishing doesn't work, and making rust shiny by polishing, using oil, clear coat, or whatever, looks very strange and unnatural. My Rambler has decent paint on one quarter panel that had been repaired, but the rest of the car is in bad shape, the paint is heavily cracked, and the top surface mostly has just rust remaining. There's not a smooth surface to polish. So, I just leave it alone. I clean the windows, but the rest is gonna stay dirty and ugly while I have it. If the paint were in better condition, I'd consider cleaning it up. It really depends on the condition of the surface. But either way, anything beyond cleaning and polishing, just looks weird. And if you're concerned about "preserving" it, just park it inside, that will stop the deterioration.
There is a product called Penetrol, by Flood, I think. It's like a linseed oil, but with a hardener or japan drier or something. Compatible with oil based paints (it's actually sold as a paint additive). I've had good luck with it as a gunstock finish, and on brass and bronze marine hardware. Never tried it on patina, but I think it might be better than straight linseed oil. That crap can take forever to dry, especially if you put it on too heavy.
I agree with those that say clean the surfaces however you can (buffing is great on paint, rougher areas are going to need to be scrubbed with SOS or something) and then a couple coats of wax. Leave it alone beyond that. Putting clear coat over the top looks dorky to me and isn't really keeping it from getting rustier (think about painting over rusty body panels, that doesn't stop the rust, why would clearcoat?) If it's so rusty that buffing and wax are pointless, then I feel like it's beyond "preserving". The paint on my '57 Chevy is about as ugly as they come, but the purpose of this car was low budget everyday use so it stayed. I scrubbed all the dirt and stains off, buffed whatever paint was on it, and I put wax on it every year. There's no exposed steel or rust on it really, just a lot of old paint, peeled off in some spots and sticking in other spots, and a lot of old repairs. The areas I welded or that had any bare metal got touched up to kinda/sorta match. Good enough. To add clearcoat to it would spoil the whole point of not repainting it in the first place, and a coating of sticky linseed oil isn't going to help it any more than wax will, either.
Cleaned, 2000 grit, hand rubbed and back on the road (And we did clean the WS as well since this pic) Customer (my son) was happy with the results. grill has been refinished with in a fake (P word) style
Anchor Wax, it soaked in and sealed my cracked and leaky original 1928 fabric roof, spread it on in a few thick coats on hot sunny days. Couple of coats slapped on prevented further rusting on surface chassis and body rust over 7 yrs in my experience. Tacky at first but time cures that.
Yes, Flood Penetrol, is found in the paint section. It's a mix if boiled linseed oil and alyphatic resins according to the ingredients. I used it on my old 88 F-250 to stop the surface rust on horizontal surfaces and the rest of the truck as well. It does make the surface kind of shiny like BLO. When newly coated it was glossy, but now after several months outside exposure it is less glossy. But not semi or flat by any means. The Penetrol is intended as an oil base paint additive to flow out brush strokes. I just put it on straight, after a CLR bath and light scotchbrite scrubbing followed by a naptha wipe down prior to the brushing on Penetrol. Best part is the Penetrol is approx $10/qt and that is enough for a normal size vehicle. Brush on, takes about 1 day to not be tacky, and longer for complete drying. I painted inside garage, let it dry 24 hours and then outside to the sun for final drying. Probably 3 days it was good and dry. On the old chalky paint it looked like new glossy paint, and the rusty areas with primer and surface rust it is just shiny. Fake looking shiny rust, but protected from further paint degredation. It is not a patina or fake patina finish, just a cheap and easy way to protect what paint/primer/rust is there. For the effort it accomplished better result than I was expecting, and the best part is the entire job was like $25 total for materials.
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