I have a drivers side front door that has a significant amount of lip rust on the bottom of the door. All my other doors have some rust in the same place but not as much as this door. I know the rust is bad enough that I will probably need a replacement door but I'm having a hard time finding one. Until then, I'd like to fix this door up as best I can until I find another door. I know I need to grind and sand away all the corroded and rusted metal. After that do I just brush on some sort of rust converter and then topcoat with a rubberized undercoating? Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

I guess it depends if you want to fix it right, or limp it along. The reality is that the door you show is best replaced with a brand new door shell. Almost all the used doors of that era you will find will be on a similar path. I can tell you for sure that ford was well enough aware that these doors were a problem for rusting in that area. So much so, that they have a tsb, and thier engineers developed a tool to open up the lip on the back side of the door, so it's techs could get mini grinders in behind the lip to clean it up, prime, then close it up again, and repaint the bottom of the door edge. That said, if you try that with your doors, your lip will fall off. It is too far gone. Thge best fix for those is to cut out the bottom 2 inches of your door skins, fabricate some replacement chunks, and but weld them back in, of course after removing any and all scale and rust from the shell, and rust proofing from the inside when you're done.

I did so many of these door lip repairs back in the late 90's, early '00's it was sickening. Because of it's year, I wouldn't spend the money on 4 shells, I'd repair. It wouldn't suprise me if an aftermarket company has already developed replacement sections. Grindind the outside and doind a quick Maaco fix won't last 6 months. You gotta cut out the sections.