my camaro has been sitting around for a while, it was outside in my driveway. i hadn't driven it in about a year but it has been started every couple of months. i pulled the car into my garage and i have started to work on it, im going to replace the carpet. i torn it outready it was a nasty, rotten, disgusting 24 year old badly worn out carpet. i had a couple of small rust areas i wanted to address. the car is still in fairly good shape, but its not it is a 24 year old car. i sandblasted the rust areas, and i really have only one small area about 2"x2" that i might have to replace metal. as soon as i started blasting this area i got some holes. i couple other areas that had rust cleaned up fairly well and i have another area that only has a pin hole. what do i do with this very small hole. can i use fiberglass mesh to replace any of these areas. the floor is not a rotted out mess or anything like that but i want to prevent it from happening. has anyone used rust bullet, i think i might buy some and do the effected areas. anyways does fiberglass mesh work or is it a temporary band aide? im not looking to simply band aide the car but i want to do it in such a manner that 5-6 years from now i can look back and say that it held up well. my car is not and never will be a salted third gen it came from north carolina and aside from a few very small areas it is still very solid. i think i want to get these issues fixed this winter and put the car back on the road sometime late march early april when the "weather breaks" (we have had nearly no snow yet but they have salted the road)

i really cannot believe how thin GM made these floor pans. are all floor pans in all cars this thin. im surprised they lasted as long as they did to begin with. i think the floors on these cars were kind of known to rot out. do they make floors out of thicker material now or do they just treat the metal differently?

 

replace the 2x2 area the pin hole you can get away with just welding it fiberglassing it wont do much. it will still rot you just wont notice it until it get worse. i think the new ones are the same thickness.

 

Get a wire brush adapter and brush the pin hole areas until they are completely clean. Then wipe those area's down with acetone. Pick up short or long strand fiberglass filler and skim it over the pin holes. Do it in a neat manner so that it looks clean. After it drys paint both floor pans. I layed thick coats of black tremclad by brush. Looks like brand new. Never rusted again in the 4 years longer I owned the car. It even sat outdoors when parked in the winter. You can also clean up the underside and give it a good thick brush on coat.

I had a car that had a rotted out drivers side floor pan from a leaking t-top ,car sat for years. It resulted in a 4x15 hole down the side of the floor beside the rocker (along side the door area) and a 10x10 hole in the rear footwell area. I cut out and welded new patches into those areas. Near the front drain area under the pedals a bunch of tiny pin holes popped up while cleaning the rust. The floor was still strong there so I skimmed that area with fiberglass filler. Worked perfect. Never did the rust come back.

 

fiberglass = botcher

 

why not just cut out the affected area and weld in a new piece of metal? seems that would be far easier than anything else, and would be the proper fix

 

i do not own a welder but i have a friend of mine that says he has acess to a welder and he is actually a fellow camaro owner, well he has a really nice camaro but its not a third gen. he has a second gen camaro and his car is super nice, he has a dart engine that he claims is built for 600 HP, i have my doubts about that figure but still his car is show room quality. he told me he could probably help me weld a patch in the 2"x2" spot. i guess i could consider myself lucky anways. my car is a t top car and when i removed the back seats i found some water under the seat. luckily the paint under the rug for the most part did its job and protected the floor from damage its still pretty solid. i cannot image having a 4"x15" or a 10"x10" hole to deal with, doesnt sound like too much fun.

have floor pans always been as thin as they are on these cars? really i think you could cut them with tin snips. im glad the paint wasnt more broken down becuase i would have had allot more damage with the thickness of the steel it doesnt semm like it takes much for them to rot away.

 

what about rust bullet? has anyone tried that product because it is supposed to prevent rust from ever comming back

 

This.

 

Fiber glassing a major rotted out area full of weak holes is clearly not the solution. But when you still have a good section of the floor where some pin holes opened up after brushing the rust away, a skim of filler is acceptable.