Slider Rust Solve

Starting to see a little bit of rust on my sliders. Can I sand, prime and paint to halt the spread or am I too late and need to fully strip them down?

 

You can absolutely clean it up and paint it.

Corrosion is just an electrochemical reaction that occurs when metal has contact with an electrolyte. Paint is a barrier that keeps the electrolyte from contacting the metal thus staving off reaction (corrosion cell) that wants to occur.

As the saying goes, prep is everything.

Clean the oxidized spots back to clean white metal (a good wire brush, mechanical or manual), keeping in mind that often the oxidation goes under the coating a bit further than the eye can see, so be sure you get to really well adhered coating while stripping it.

Make sure the surface is clean (acetone/etc) and clear of contaminates and recoat it with your choice of product.

If grease/dirt/etc gets trapped under the coating, then the coating is containing the electrolyte or chemicals, not a barrier for resisting them.

Also, keep in mind that rocks, UV and general use are going to continue to degrade the coating with time. You could do a perfect recoat job and it’ll probably look like this again in a few years. Do a good job and accept that it’s a maintenance item that you’ll have to do every now and again, if you keep the truck that long.

On future setups, if you want true longevity (and can justify the cost for it, aka see an acceptable ROI on the added cost), try zinc coating the parts before powder coating/painting. The zinc will act as a localized galvanic/sacrificial anode and will work to slow the corrosion rate of the steel parts.

- a guy who works in the corrosion industry