Treating rusted sills?

Escort wagon, '95, genuine 77,400 miles.

I've been ignoring a patch of what I thought was surface rust on one of my sills for a while now, but when I took a closer look at it a few days ago I was able to push a hole straight through it with my thumb, so I took it into the shop to have some welding done.

That section is now good again but I have other spots of surface rust along the sills, and pretty much all the way along the seam at the lower edge of both sills which I'll need to deal with before winter arrives.

Plan is to clean the rusty areas back to bare metal with a wire brush and sandpaper, apply rust treatment, then primer, and then a paint topcoat. I'm not too bothered about how it looks so I won't be spraying it - just applying paint with a brush.

Does that sound a reasonable plan?

Sounds like the best you can do.

I wonder if this product is any good? ... http://www.por15.com/

I'd never heard of POR-15 but I checked it out and it appears it is available over here. I'll probably use something called Jenolite for the rust treatment though - it says on the packaging, "As supplied to the MoD" (Ministry of Defence), so if it's good enough for the armed forces then it will probably be good enough for me. I'm annoyed with myself for leaving the sills untreated for so long, because when I bought the car at four years old, it was always my intention to paint them before any rust even appeared, and I'm old enough to know there's a lot of truth in that old saying, 'a stitch in time saves nine'. After the sills are done, I'll have the rear wheel arches to deal with. One of them isn't too bad but the other will need fibreglass and filler :(

I'd never heard of POR-15 but I checked it out and it appears it is available over here. I'll probably use something called Jenolite for the rust treatment though - it says on the packaging, "As supplied to the MoD" (Ministry of Defence), so if it's good enough for the armed forces then it will probably be good enough for me. I'm annoyed with myself for leaving the sills untreated for so long, because when I bought the car at four years old, it was always my intention to paint them before any rust even appeared, and I'm old enough to know there's a lot of truth in that old saying, 'a stitch in time saves nine'. After the sills are done, I'll have the rear wheel arches to deal with. One of them isn't too bad but the other will need fibreglass and filler :(


thats a good idea..i wish i treated my escorts rust when i got it..now its even worse...