Now that it stopped raining for several days and 2 40F+ days presented themselves, I began the trunk seal channel work. I tackled the more difficult part of the job first - the most rusted areas of the seal channel that need reconstruction.

In my case, that was the right side of the trunk. I scraped off the rust gunk from the previous seal best I could: first with the pry bar blade, which fits perfectly in the channel, then with the wire brush, then with sand paper. I applied a paint stripper, then cleaned with Marine Clean, and finally prepped with Metal Ready. The stripper doesn't seem to be doing too much for me -- maybe because of the outdoor temperature -- so I am still having to do a lot of sanding. I often can't get down to shiny metal, but I am hoping that I've exposed enough of it to make it all stick fine. Plus, there's plenty of rough surface, so hopefully that will be OK.

I painted with POR-15 rust-preventive paint (black) the right-side channel, the bend under the right trunk hinge, and most of the inner channel next to rear windscreen. I then cut pieces of the fiber mesh sheet (from POR-15 guys, too) and laid them over the holes, painting POR-15 gently over to saturate. That seemed to work fine, and the mesh seemed to hold in the paint without letting it run off and drip. Good stuff! Finally, at the bend under the right hinge, where the sidewall of my channel is totally gone, I laid some fiber mesh vertically to bridge the existing metal walls I just painted. I let the paint act as glue to hold the mesh in place vertically, and that seemed to come out alright, although that took quite some finesse. I again saturated the vertically laid piece of mesh with POR-15 paint.

We shall see what comes out of this. I'm letting it dry and set for now.

I am thinking that once my vertical mesh piece is dry and hopefully set in place, I should apply POR-Patch over it, to build up a stronger layer from the "tentative" structure. I might also use some POR-Patch to smooth over the fiber mesh patches I laid on channel floor at various locations, to create a smoother surface for my trunk seal. If that works, I would then paint over POR-Patch with POR-15 again. Like I said - I don't know yet how things have set, or if they have set yet. Drying time is sure to increase in this cold weather.

-Denis

__________________
84 300SD - bought in April '06 with 237,000 mi