Left Tail Light Patch

For the first time in a long time it rained today. Long and hard, the kind of rain that replenishes the soil and turns the grass on the slopes of Diamond Head green. Just the kind of day that caused me to worry about primer rust-through. I actually wrote my previous post about painting over primer earlier in the week, but never managed to upload it from my Newton until just now.

My day began with a bit of shopping. The shopping that I was going to do yesterday, but it was my younger son's birthday and that involved a lot of shopping at places that don't sell automotive painting supplies. I picked up a new box of disposable latex gloves, and a spray can of white, general purpose automotive enamel. Even though I had the paint I decided it was too humid to use it. If I had I would have ended up locking in moisture rather than keeping it out.

My goal for the day was to attach the patch for the lower right corner of the left tail light opening. The previous patch around the fog light would anchor this one. The guy working next to me was replacing the headliner in his mini-van, and certainly seemed to know what he was doing. He reminded me that for bare metal the first thing to to use is acid etch primer. I should have used that on the window seal, but besides just flat out forgetting, that job required the application of Epoxy Putty over bare metal, so all is not lost.

The first thing to do was to cut away the part that will be the lower left corner of the fog light. To ensure I had it fit correctly I stuck the tail light assemble into place. With the recess I previously hammer formed just touching the rubber seal, I marked where the opening needed to be cut. The job of finishing the cut was made much easier by a new find, a rotary file for the shop's little die grinder. It made forming the corner much easier than when using a rat tail file. The last step was to punch a series of holes to weld through.

When the patch was fit I used the die grinder's wire brush to remove the Weld-Thru primer left over from last week, wiped the area with acetone, and shot the mating surfaces with Weld-Thru primer. The plan being to shoot the inside with Weld-Thru as temporary fix until I can do it all with POR-15, and to shoot the outside with acid etch primer.

The welding went fine. The pics show a before and after, from different views. The application of the acid etch primer did not fare as well. I managed to get one little fush from the can, then nothing. It wasn't the nozzle that was plugged, it was than can itself. Why? Because the can, still full, had a date of manufacture of 2004. So my only choice was to spray the outside with Weld-Thru primer, too. Next week I get to remove that and use some fresh acid etch primer.