My EG hatch has rust on the roof and around the tail lights. I’m debating between cutting it back to clean metal and welding in new patches, or just cutting it out and using bondo to fill.

Is it worth going full cut + weld, or is bondo “good enough” if I just want it to look decent and slow it down? Anyone here deal with EG rust before? What’s the smarter move?

 

If the rust hasn't eaten through the metal aka swiss cheese.. and its just on the surface, grind/clean away as much as you can off the area, there will be pitts and area's you probably wont be able to reach so getting some type of rust killer/preventative spray to stop what's there, i use one at work you spray on and it converts the rust to zinc in 30 mins then scotch brite and epoxy primer to seal it in, then do your filler/body repairs as normal. If the metal is so rusted it swiss cheese aka you can see holes.. there's most likely rust like that behind the panel.. cutting away the outer bad metal and replacing it gives you a chance to address whats on the inside.

 

Almost.

More like iron oxide(rust) to iron phosphate. Anyway it does convert the rust to something more stable.

 

The converter chemically reacts with the rust, neutralizing it and forming a black, stable, zinc-phosphate or tannic-acid based coating.

 

What treatment is that? Ospho is an iron oxide to iron phosphate conversion using phosphoric acid. No zinc in the equation.

 

I'll post a photo of the bottle when I'm at work tomorrow.

 

 

rust prep looks good, I use metal blast from Rust Bullet, pretty fast avail on line or at your local hardware store.

Bondo is no good, it tends to absorb moisture... Upol seems to have a better body filler. I saw these 2 guys doing a job in the parking lot at the local auto part store, we had a talk and yes, they do not use bondo. Otherwise I have been using jb weld or JB kwik for little damage... I have been using some marine epoxy before but had poor results.

Yes, in the end welding is probably your best choice knowing that our vintage Honda really rust from the inside out...