My recent 2007 purchase from snowy/salty PA has more rust than was immediately apparent. The Ford drop-in bed liner was hiding some rust-throughs at the front of the bed and there's surface rust throughout undercarriage/frame. The 4.0L runs drives like new (only 103K miles) so really want to save the body. To stop the cancer I plan to brush off the loose rust on the frame and encapsulate. At this point, I don't plan on removing the bed, but I may pull up the bed liner and address from above. Any other tips? Thanks in advance!

 

Welcome to the forum. PA (and other areas that use road salt) are killer on vehicles. Your story (more rust than immediately apparent) is familiar to me and anyone else who has a vehicle that has lived in PA/NY/etc. My 1998 frame was pretty well shot in the rear so I went about a process of replacing the rear half with a southern sourced frame rear. I spent time cleaning the new half and painting it with rust reformer and such to ensure it was at least clean to begin with.

If you're confident in the frame integrity, just the steps you're considering (knocking off the loose rust and using a rust reformer) is probably a good choice. If the box is beyond help, those come off fairly easily so you can probably just source a clean box and replace it.

The guys here have mostly "been there/done that" and I've been leaning on the collective knowledge for most of the process of my ranger resurrection. Good luck with your new ride.

 

Wouldn't even bother with it to be honest. My 93 is absolutely rusted to hell underneath. Makes doing any sort of work on the underside a big hassle. I'm in illinois. There's no fighting it and winning, you just lose.

 

Thanks for the sense of realism with these trucks. It will be important to keep nature's "reality" in mind. I need to pick my battles and only focus on the ones where my efforts can make a difference.

 

My 99 has a patina growing on the frame and the metal outer body is pretty starting bubbling. I was in the door and it’s clean inside so I’m hoping for five years out of this 180k baby.

my thought was to spray the under body with permatex rust or even wd40? Any favorite brands? If not to win the battle, slow it’s progress? Has anyone successfully slowed the rust army? (Wisconsin)