Evening – My Nissan Elgrand has developed a few spots of rust on the boot door. Just the boot door, nowhere else. Looks like a stone has chipped the paint off and then a very small circle of rust has developed around each chip. Maybe 3 or 4 in total.

Is the fix something simple like sanding the chipped area down and the painting with a touch up paint and some sort of waxing oil?

Google seems to suggest taking a wire brush to it and priming the area etc. Seems over the top for a few small chips…..?

If it’s started rusting it will probably continue even with some kind of protection painted over it. I’m assuming it wasn’t a galvanised body given how readily it started to rust and the fact it’s a Japanese car.

I think folk wax oil the underside to prevent rust.

A Dremel can be handy for small chips, just go careful.
Remove all visible rust.
If holes start appearing, chances are it’s rusting from the inside and a world of hurt.
Paint with a rust treatment.
Primer
Colour
If it’s small chips, you can use a small brush to build up the paint to an acceptable finish.

It won’t look factory, but neither does rust.

If you have rust coming from the inside, cavity wax and a Lance can slow it down.
I’d recommend doing it anyway on older cars imported from places where road salt isn’t a thing.

You can easily treat the rust and make it stay away. However making it look good is a different matter altogether!

To treat it then yes, you sand down to shiny metal (or use kurust) then apply primer. The best way to do this is to spray some in the lid and then paint it into the hole you just made. otherwise you’ll end up with overspray inflation and be doing a whole panel before you know it. Then you sand that down flat and spray some paint over. When spraying it is really hard to spray a small area. You need a quick burst of spray. You need to be a certain distance away from the panel so that the spray settles properly, but if you are that far away you get a circle of paint about 15cm across, so it is hard to get right. You may need to spray the can onto a piece of waste card first to clear the nozzle. One thing that I found useful is to make a piece of card with a small hole in it and spray through that but held 5-10cm away from the body, to make the spray area smaller, but this is quite hard to do. You could probably do better with a small box with an appropriate sized hole cut in it. The hole needs to be some distance from the body to allow the spray to diffuse so you don’t get a sharply defined circle through the hole.

If it’s not metallic, then you can spray multiple times, leaving it for say 15 mins in between (or 30 in winter), with loads of coats, then you can rub it down with some 800 grit then 1500, then polish it (T-Cut or similar) it and it might look ok. If it is metallic, well, then you have a much harder job on your hands. Metallic needs the lacquer on top, but do not sand the paint down before putting the lacquer on, it ruins the finish. It is possible to get a decent finish by not sanding the paint down but it is really hard and you need to get the paint layer spot on because you cannot sand out any irregularities like you can with flat paint.

I’ve just been through this (can you tell?) and I’ve managed to get an invisible finish *in some places* and it still looks shit in others.

I find POR15 lasts a lot longer than kurust.

Oh btw getting a mobile body repair person in is a lot cheaper than you’d think. I wish I had before I started pissing about.

Aquasteel neutralises the rust – basically a weak acid. POR15 over the top to prevent anything new. Be aware POR15 does not come off your skin so wear gloves and long sleeves

Thanks for the insight. I think i may get a quote from a mobile repair person before doing owt else.

With contempt.