rust proofing/ prevention

so the underbody of my jeep cj5 is very rusted. used to be a farm jeep. whats the best thing to do.....buy a rust preventative paint and do it myself or take it somewhere to get sandblased? im also thinking about rhino-lining the whole floorboard. any thoughts?:?

 

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I went through the thought process and I think it depends on how far you go on your rebuild. if your going to do a frame off restoration then no way I would rhino line the floor. Although that stuff is bullet proof its hard to work with and around once its there. Sand blasting is cheap and once you get the bottom clean then you can weld in new material and go from there.

 

Great. thanks guys.

 

Rust never sleeps, coatings are just a nice blanket to keep it happy. Blast it, cut it, weld it, paint it.

 

You need to at least scrape and wire brush to get the loose stuff off. The best route is to take it down to raw steel - ie blast, brush or grind... or replace.

If you have bare metal, you can prime and then paint.

If there is any residual rust, you have two options AFAIK.
1) Convert the rust before priming (Naval Jelly or one of the newer organic (?) rust convertors - I recall the Permatex product has been well received by some here). Conversion turns the red rust into a comparatively inert form of iron oxide (black oxide, aka magnetite).
2) Seal it with one of the encapsulating paints like Eastwood or POR-15. Then prime and paint. These paints draw moisture out of the rust and seal it from the atmosphere, preventing further rusting.

 

I've had great experience using Makita 4" grinder with wire wheel to get down to bare metal, then applying RUSTMORT, then primer and paint for surface rust. If you discover there's some rust-through in the wirewheeling process, then you'll already have it prepped for any welding/steel panel replacement, then still use RUSTMORT as a prep step.