How to remove and treat surface rust on your van
In this blog post we will run through step-by-step how you can permanently remove any rust spots that you find on the floor of your van! As well as how we filled and covered the holes in our van floor, from when we removed the seat rails.
Keep reading for everything you need to know about...
About our Campervan Build
So we are super excited to be building our very own campervan - or what will be calling our home for the road for when we travel around.
Our goal is to keep the entire van build and conversion under £20,000. And we will be documenting every little bit of our van conversion, giving you step by step guides and all of our top tips - mainly so you don’t have to endure our mistakes!
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel to follow our DIY minibus to campervan build, and be the first to hear about our upcoming episodes - such as...
- Van Buying Tips! Choosing the right one for your campervan conversion
- How to remove seats and rails from Ford Transit MK8 Minibus
- Removing plastic moulding
- How to design your own van!
Plus LOADS more!
Removing surface rust
- Start by using your wire brush to rub over any rust spots - note the sound is too pleasant!
- Once you’re happy with the amount of visible surface rust removed from using the wire brush, use a microfibre cloth to wipe away any excess rust particles.
- Then use the wire wool to go over the rust spots and get rid of any last little bits.
- Wipe over again with a microfibre cloth.
- Now get your Hammerite rust remover gel and a small brush to dab a little bit of the gel on to the rust spots - For ours it said to leave to dry and repeat the process of painting on some of gel a few times until it looks like the rust has completely gone.
Note: read and follow the exact instructions as per your rust remover gel bottle.
- Once your final layer of rust remover gel is dry, then use the wire brush to give the area a good scrub and get the gel off.
- If you’re struggling to get it off with just the wire brush, then dab some water on your microfibre cloth and wipe the gel off.
Rust Prevention
Now that you have removed the surface rust, you need to treat the area to prevent it from getting any more rust again...
For this you will need some Rust Metal Paint - we only had black paint but as we would be covering the van floor base anyways, we didn't mind how it looks on the white paint already there. Plus it saved us some money!
Just use a small paint brush to simply paint over the treated rust spot, and leave to dry.
Covering the holes
If you've got some small holes in the base of your van floor then you can easily fill and cover these! We had quite a lot from where we removed the minibus seat rails.
What you will need:
- 1p and 2p coins
- UPOL Tiger seal
Simply pop some tiger seal around the inside edge of the hole and pop over a 1 or 2p coin to cover and seal the hole! Easy!
Overview
So that should be everything you need to know about how to remove and treat surface rust on your van, as well as how to fill any holes in your van floor from removing minibus seat rails!
We did it over a the course of a day, so it probably took us about 3 and 1/2 hours in total - although that did include time to allow the rust remover gel in between treatment.
Stay tuned for next week’s blog post where we’ll be showing you how we did our floor insulation and plywood.
Plus don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to hear about our new vlog releases!!
Comment below if you have any questions, and I'll be in touch soon! Or get in touch online here.
Helen x
Coconuts and Camels
One response
Laser cleaning machine is a good choice to remove the rust from metal!