Internal Frame Coat Review. Treat hidden rust!

You may recall a post I made a few months ago about a handful of new products we had in the works. One of them was a rust treatment to go on hidden or unaccessible areas of your vehicle that you can’t get to with a normal aerosol can or brush. This product evolved into our Internal Frame Coat product. I recently found a perfect use for it on my VW pickup truck project.

After I thought I had taken care of all of my rust and “critter” nests when I restored my gas tank last month ( read about the fiasco here ). I began going over the last bits to make the truck legal, you know the last little nagging jobs, like fixing burnt out bulbs and aiming the headlights. I had a couple of broken grounds and bad bulbs in the tail lights on both sides of the truck, so I needed to remove the lenses to troubleshoot the issues. As soon as I removed them, I smelled that all too familiar smell of mouse/critter “debris” . Upon Inspecting behind the tail lights, I found that critters must have made nests in the opening behind the bedsides of the truck! Who knows how they made their way into that spot, but it sure was packed tight, about 3-4 inches deep with nests. After using a vacuum and some long screwdrivers to break up the nests, I was left with some scaly rust that I knew I had to address immediately.

I had just recently painted the truck, so I was glad I had found this rust, as it would have surely started creeping out of the bedsides. Surely, rust bubbles would form in the paint down the line, and ultimately compromise the entire paint job.

So I grabbed a couple cans of our internal frame coat, and went to town. The first thing to mention, is that you want to make sure you shake the can well before beginning the process. It seemed to take a little more shaking before spraying, than it did with a normal spray paint can. Another tip that I found useful, was to “prime” the extension wand for the can. The extension is about 24″ long, so it takes a little bit to get it flowing out of the machined brass tip. Speaking of, our R&D department worked hard to design this extension/brass tip combo specifically for this part. We need something that would help cover the areas you are spraying completely. Often times in frames, and other hidden areas, you can hardly see how well you are covering, you need some piece of mind that all of the rust is treated. The tip is machined to spray in a very wide fan pattern. The fan pattern is combined with the ability for the internal frame coat to “creep” into every “nook and cranny”, and you can rest assured all of that hidden rust is properly treated.

I was impressed with how well it coated the inside of the bedsides. I found that starting at the bottom and working my way up the sides covered the best, the excess ran down and sat in the bottom where the worst of the rust was anyways, so it worked out well. I kept spraying until I had started to see the coating dripping out of the openings in the bottom of the bedsides where the pinch welds are. My only other suggestion is to be very careful if you are using this around nice cleaned parts or items that you don’t want paint on, I was careless when pulling the nozzle out of the bedside, and I let some of the coating drip out of the nozzle and on my clean, painted bumpers. The green dots contrast pretty badly on the black bumpers, and I am having a heck of a time getting it off the bumpers! It makes sense though, this stuff is made to coat, treat, and seal the surface it is intended for, so simply rubbing it with spray detailer won’t do the job. I’m just hoping I don’t have to scuff, and respray that part of the bumper!

Check out the pictures below, the before/after shots are pretty dramatic!