Prepping my oil pan for POR15

[Shamish]

So I noticed a little rust on my pan, and figured I better do something about it since I love my truck, and want to keep it for a long while (or at least until we can get a rockin' diesel and a manual tranny in the SD).

Prepping the pan is a beast! I have spent a couple of hours under the truck with a sander getting the paint off on the easy parts of the pan (good reason to buy a new tool), and I just spent another hour removing the rest of the paint with paint remover. I left a 2-3" band of paint at the top of the pan since it seemed OK.

Now I need to let everything dry, sand the rest of the paint off (by hand...), and then start the POR15 prep process.

Before I do this, I have a question for those of you who have been down this road: Should I let the oil pan rust up a bit before degreasing and applying the POR15? The directions say that it holds on to rust way better than bare metal (even if you use the "metal prep"), and I sure don't want to have to do this again.

Have a great day.

[dlblazer]

I've had the best luck with POR15 when I used their degreaser. If the metal has a light surface rust, the POR15 should adhere fine as well - it has on my car trailer.

The only problems I've had is where I didn't paint over the POR15 and it was exposed to the sun. The UV rays break it down.

[DHTD]

I would wait, Ive put it on fresh metal before only to have it flake off, it works amazing on rusted parts!!