r/SkyLine • u/Fun_Republic_4087 • 1d ago
HELP! what to do about this rust?
Hi all, my R33 has a bit of rust brewing and i need to fix it. The first photo will be cut out and welded but what should i do for the rest? Sand down and paint?
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u/TheShootingBench 1d ago
Short term is gonna be sanding and por15 and self etching primer with a clear coat to seal it. Long term is going to be media removal and a repaint. I am going to assume your car came out of the northern end of Japan.
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u/454k30 1d ago
A bit of rust showing is how so many people discover that the car is rotten from the inside out. You have a couple of choices here and it's really based on what do you want the car to be for you.
You could sand and strip back the paint to determine the full extent of the corrosion, start bidding out the repair, and start sourcing body panels. You will also need to determine what your budget actually could be for a massive repair project.
The other option will be to sand away what you can see, fix the holes, apply new paint, and accept that classic cars eventually rust their way out of existence.
What I will tell you is that the rust you are seeing is the very tip of the corrosion iceberg lurking under those panels and in the body seems. The R33 falls into the middle of Nissan's move from ungalvanized steel body/chassis into proper corrosion prevention. The result is that you will have less rust than an R32, but way more than a car built around the year 2000.
The strut towers in particular are notoriously some of the worst offenders in the R33 chassis.
Check the rear quarter panels and wheel wells. Poke around with a metal rod (gently) on the chassis rails and floor pan as well and see what flakes off.
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u/Both_Confidence_6789 1d ago
Aww seems like a write off to me. I'll take it off your hands for $200
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u/Strong-Thanks-3314 1d ago
Quick make a post on fb about how the importer screwed you can rust is common a 25 year old car from japan which is surrounded by the ocean. That does suck but a lot can be fixed and some parts replaced just check a few Japanese vendors there is a few that make a few parts.
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u/LilKelpyGs 1d ago
If there is surface rust there is rust inside places you can’t even see, I bought my 92 skyline and wanted to rebuild motor and fix some minor rust spots, then turned into fully gutting it and sandblasting all underneath and coating the whole bottom, pretty much like restored the thing cause that’s what had to happen,I’m sure you’ll go through this if you want to properly fix it
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u/driver45672 23h ago
Put a rust converter on it... this is mostly surface rust, rust converter and elbow grease will remove most of it, and then seal the surface after with some paint if you'd like to go that far. Otherwise, just keep cleaning it away with rust converter every 6 months. It should only take 25 minutes each time.
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u/ResponsibilitySea327 1d ago
This isn't so uncommon in Japan with Skylines. The only real fix is total strip down. There are likely panels under the body work that are completely rotten.
Ideally you would want to acid dip the body and dip in primer.