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Repair Your Rusty Frame - Four Wheeler Magazine

Corrosion is something you live with on a day-to-day basis in the Northeast, and it’s not just limited to vehicles, it affects everything made of metal. The road salt, the humidity-laden air, soft absorptive soils, acid rain, and road chemicals all work in a harmonic quintet to do their damage to the metals on your 4x4, and they do it damn well too. Factory precautions from manufacturers do help, but over time, this retardant is usually overwhelmed by the environment (natural or manmade), and things can go from bad to worse in just a few months if left unregulated.

salt Licked rusted Jeep Chassis Photo 34789103

This Jeep Wrangler TJ has seen better days. After only 7 years on the road, the effects of New England’s worst elements can be seen on the chassis and substructure. A chain was needed to keep the transfer case crossmember/skidplate from falling off of this rusty frame.

Luckily for us, there are companies like Auto Rust Technicians situated in the eye of the corrosive hurricane that is the northeast corridor of the U.S. Auto Rust Technicians understands how these corrosive factors invade the chassis of 4x4s and have learned the lesson Mother Nature teaches us every day. The company has developed ways to turn back that corrosive time, and breathe new life into both everyday drivers, and our favorite four-wheeled play toys.

Auto Rust Technicians is not just a shop. Sure the company can work on any make and model truck or car, rebuilding sub-frames with heavy-handed precision. But it’s also a production facility. The company has a full line of in-house-prepared replacement parts and Safe-T-Cap reinforcement plates for many makes and model cars, SUV’s, and 4x4s.

We recently took a ride up to Cranston, Rhode Island, and watched the guys at Auto Rust Technicians save another Jeep from going prematurely to that big scrap heap in the sky. If your 4x4 is having underside issues there may be a Safe-T-Cap part number to ease your pain.

PhotosView Slideshow The lower part of the framerails has disintegrated. Auto Rust will cut out the bad rails, insert Safe-T-cap framerail repair pieces, and then take steps to prevent future corrosion.

The lower part of the framerails has disintegrated. Auto Rust will cut out the bad rails, insert Safe-T-cap framerail repair pieces, and then take steps to prevent future corrosion.

The first step is to get this salted Jeep into the blasting booth. Here, the framerails are sandblasted clean to get a better look at the extent of the corrosion.

Technician Pete Choquette takes out the plasma cutter and excises the rotted lower section of framerail on both the driver- and passenger-side of the Jeep, leaving just the upper section of each rail. The new Safe-T-Cap will be welded to this remaining rust-free section of frame.

Here you can see the final cut. The lower section of the rail is completely removed and the cut is done to keep the original body mounts intact. The new rail cap will fit snugly into the body mount’s structural cavity.

Before the cap can be welded onto the original rail, the frame is cleaned up with a grinding pad. This will not only clean up any residual corrosion, but it also gives the metal a cleaner skin to help make a stronger weld.

The Safe-T-Cap frame repair sections are designed and made in-house at Auto Rust Technicians. Here Choquette checks the fit of the cap. Only slight grinding is needed to get the piece to fit like a glove.

Before the cap can be welded, Choquette reinstalls the factory skidplate to make sure everything fits properly. The skidplate also holds the rails in place while he MIG welds the cap to the frame.

Every contact area on the perimeter of the Safe-T-Cap is welded firmly shut to keep moisture and salt from entering the edge of the rail and possibly promoting corrosion.

Once the repairs are done, rust prevention is the next step. Choquette sprays a dose of SEM Internal Panel Coating into the frame access holes. It coats the inside of the repaired framerails to prevent moisture and salt from eating away at the fresh metal from the inside out.

The outside of the rails are next. A liberal dose of Kirker chassis paint is brushed onto the bare metal. This will give a good basecoat to protect against surface rust on the new framerails.

Once dry, a heavy coat of industrial-use undercoating is sprayed on the repaired area. Anything that was sandblasted receives a fresh skin of undercoating to keep corrosives off of the bare metal.

Here we have the sodium-free Jeep ready to roll. Though more factory rust prevention could have helped prevent this situation, it’s only a matter of time before northeast daily drivers like this Wrangler feel the wrath of the elements in New England.

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Repair Your Rusty Frame - Four Wheeler Magazine

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