So poor old Betsy the van has seen better days.

She's still as witty/quick as the day she was born but her poor old body is giving way. Both the front and rear window seals are rort with rust. So much so that she now has an internal water feature, thankfully on the passenger side. I realize it’s probably gone too far to bother fixing, so I’m wanting to at least if possible slow the advance.

It’s been suggested to coat with a rust converter and then fill with a silicon like substance. Would this be my best option? I’d love to at least get another year out of the old girl.

photos?

Can you try an electric drill to carefully remove the rust without poking through? once you are at clean metal you can treat. Otherwise you may have to remove windscrean/windows and repair. Its all doable, just a matter of the time/money you want to spend

few cans of squirts paint from the chinese shop and post adverts at all the backpackers for van under a grand or whatever

My station wagon was leaking badly in the rear side window (about 2 liters per day in heavy rain), as well as all along the top of the windscreen where there was rust perforation. I fixed both by running fish oil along the leaking areas. Did this every 2nd day for a fortnight, parking the car in the sun as much as possible to allow the solvents in the oil to dry out and harden the fish oil. That was about 3 years ago, and haven't had a leak since. I now run a little fish oil into the same area once a year as a preventative top up. None of the rust has progressed either.

Rust converter is good if you want to do a proper disassembly and strip down, but for the quick fix you are looking at, you'll trap water in there and the rust will still progress. Fish oil will penetrate deep, and once it dries and hardens, not only will it seal, but the rust will stop dead.

The best thing is that you won't need to do any removal of anything. In fact, you don't want to poke any holes in the rust as it will then be harder to seal with the fish oil. The first few application, some oil will seep through the rust, so be careful about where it might drip into the interior of your van. I had to lay a cloth over the front seat of my car at first. The oil will go tacky at first, and eventually it dries quite hard, sealing everything against water and air so it's near impossible for rust to occur.

If you have actual holes that you can see through, the fish oil won't be able to seal them. Plug the holes with some sort of putty, and then you can do the fish oil routine after the putty has set.

The product I use is called Fishoilene, by Wattyl.

You can put foil tape over the rust, it doesn't stop it but it keeps it from being a hole. The top of the door above the window on my Toyota Camry is held together with foil tape, If I remove the tape that part of the door is crumbles.

Once again SB supplies the goods with a few laughs chucked in for good measure.

My main concern is the front windscreen falling out. It's literally crumbling to pieces in a lot of sections and I'd say 90% of the window sill is affected by rust.


I have tinkered with the idea of cutting it out. But I think that's a bit beyond my handy man skills. I'll probably go with the fishoil route.

spray R10 rust converter [non toxic- comes in a pump spray bottle] on betsy's rusty bits,

when it has done it's job, drown it in penetrol - similar to fisholene but not as smelly.

bog it up and spray with rattle cans

edit - R10 is supposedly non toxic - but stains everything black - so I guess it is tannic acid [or similar]

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Mrknownothing said..
My main concern is the front windscreen falling out. It's literally crumbling to pieces in a lot of sections and I'd say 90% of the window sill is affected by rust.

Eeeek, that bad? I was thinking of just a few penetrating rust spots. You'll probably want the 'sn' triple combo of rust converter, penetrating oil and bog!

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Harrow said..

Mrknownothing said..
My main concern is the front windscreen falling out. It's literally crumbling to pieces in a lot of sections and I'd say 90% of the window sill is affected by rust.

Eeeek, that bad? I was thinking of just a few penetrating rust spots. You'll probably want the 'sn' triple combo of rust converter, penetrating oil and bog!

Haha, yeah Harro. I’m talking serious rust here.

It’s a bloody shame as the engine/drivetrain has never let me down and it has copped an absolute beating. Good old Hiace. Once this one dies I’ll be buying another.

Sell it to Wicked campers. All the ones I see up at Noosa are unroad-worthy.

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Mrknownothing said..

Harrow said..

Mrknownothing said..
My main concern is the front windscreen falling out. It's literally crumbling to pieces in a lot of sections and I'd say 90% of the window sill is affected by rust.

Eeeek, that bad? I was thinking of just a few penetrating rust spots. You'll probably want the 'sn' triple combo of rust converter, penetrating oil and bog!

Haha, yeah Harro. I’m talking serious rust here.

It’s a bloody shame as the engine/drivetrain has never let me down and it has copped an absolute beating. Good old Hiace. Once this one dies I’ll be buying another.

If you like it that much , get a panel beater to cut out the rust and fix it properly.

Then fisholene the whole car.

Good for another 10 years!

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jeff2 said..

Mrknownothing said..

Harrow said..

Mrknownothing said..
My main concern is the front windscreen falling out. It's literally crumbling to pieces in a lot of sections and I'd say 90% of the window sill is affected by rust.

Eeeek, that bad? I was thinking of just a few penetrating rust spots. You'll probably want the 'sn' triple combo of rust converter, penetrating oil and bog!

Haha, yeah Harro. I’m talking serious rust here.

It’s a bloody shame as the engine/drivetrain has never let me down and it has copped an absolute beating. Good old Hiace. Once this one dies I’ll be buying another.

If you like it that much , get a panel beater to cut out the rust and fix it properly.

Then fisholene the whole car.

Good for another 10 years!

I'd love to. I just don't know if it would be worthwhile. The poor old things probably only worth a couple grand.

I have a mate who is a somewhat decent welder. So I'm now seriously considering cutting it out. Whether we get it back in is another question.

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jeff2 said..

If you like it that much , get a panel beater to cut out the rust and fix it properly.

Then fisholene the whole car.

Good for another 10 years!

Hehe, another true believer. I remember ever since I was a kid, whenever dad, or my brother, or myself bought a car, we'd strip out the internal dress panels and soak everything in fish oil. Then drive around with windows wound right down for the next fortnight. Was kind of necessary with 70's Holdens if you had a salt water lifestyle.

Oh thats a classic case to pick up a good body with a blown motor and make one good one from two bad ones.

Up load a picture of the rust so we can get an idea how bad it is. You'll need to decide if you want to take the window out or not, because once you do, you're in the deep end, it will take more time and money, but it will last longer and give a better result.
Whichever way you go, don't bother with fish oil, rust converter any of that stuff until you have removed as much flaky rust, rust bubbles as you can.
use a strip it disc, wire wheel, coarse sandpaper, rust eating gel until you have as much shiny bare metal as you can, then use converters etc. If the holes are too big it will need the window out.