Just assisted a freind in sorting my cross member out.
It was showing rust badly on the back, looked quite nasty, the truck is only 5 years old...
We sandblasted all the powder coat off the back and underneath (where we could see), this took all the rust with it, and apart from some minor pitting it was nowhere near as bad as it looked. Once down to bare metal we blew most of the sand off and gave it a couple of coats of primer, this did react a little to the silicone in the sand, but the runs were sanded down quite easily.
Once the primer had set (with the assistance of a heat lamp), we gave it a couple of coats of matt black spray paint, this keyed very well to the primer.
After this was properly dry we covered the cross memeber (inside and out) with waxoyl, wiping away any excess that was visible on the back.
After this was finished the cross memeber looked as good as new, a finish that looks very much like the powdercoat, but hopefully it's keyed much better than the powdercoat ever did so should last a couple of years.
In total it cost a big bag of sand, some free PC support for my mechanic friend, about 1/4 of a can of primer and 1/4 of a can of the matt black spray and around 1/2 a litre of waxoyl. It took the best part of a morning, but this also consisted of drinking tea and taking the p1ss out of his Willy Jeep
It was made much easier by the presence of a very big compressor and as many whizzy air tools that you could shake a stick at....
Before we did this I thought that I'd be looking at either a lot of money to get it sorted, or leving it rot away and replacing it later with a pattern part.
Don't you just love mates
