Heavy Door Rot Repair: Before after & During

Hey again everyone,
My driver's side door was getting pretty heavily rotted out at the bottom corner. You couldnt see it from the outside, but it was bad. So I decided to do something about it. Fiberglass & resign would be to thin and flimsey for this particular siuation, and I almost thought I just simply had to get a new door. Well, after doing some plumbing in my house I realized how well solding held, so I decided to try to fill the hole in with a sheet of copper and solder it in place. I've posted the pictures of how it worked out. (The last picture makes it look like the car is a different color because of how dark it was outside.)

http://www.freewebs.com/petea/door1.JPG
^Before I started^
http://www.freewebs.com/petea/door2.JPG
^After cleaning out all the loose rust (Worse than it looked)^
http://www.freewebs.com/petea/door3.JPG
^Soldered the 1/16" thick piece of copper in place^
http://www.freewebs.com/petea/door4.JPG
^After some grinding, primer, and paint (Notice I left the weephole intact)^

cool

Nice job.

Wow, does it look that good on the outside?

yeah, but the outside was hidden by the chrome trim

looks good. I'm planning on doing that soon too. The body on my wagon pretty rust free except for the bottoms of the doors. I think I'll do some grinding, and then some por-15. The soldering looked like it worked pretty good.

Thanks! If you're going to solder make sure the steel that you're soldering onto it very clean (free from rust, dirt, grease) and ground down pretty well to ensure the solder holds. Take some pictures so we can see how it turns out. Good luck!

sure, I'll make sure to take some pictures. It may be a while before I get to it though. may be after the winter, although it would be better to get it done before so it doesn't get worse.

Yeah, thats why I decided to do it now so that it woulnt get any worse... then it'd be more I'd have to deal with. It just started snowing here today about a half an hour after I finished putting on my new snow tires. Talk about timing!

I ordered a POR-15 starter kit. $15 for everything I need to cover 12 sq ft. Should be plenty for the bottoms of the doors.
https://www.por15.com/product.asp?productid=301

Has anyone used POR-15?
How did it work?

Has anyone used POR-15?
How did it work?

You prep the metal and then paint it. It's supposed to work better on already rusted metal. It seals the rust and its never supposed to rust through again. It tells more about it on the website.