t’s not unheard of in the classic truck hobby to become close friends with your local sandblaster. Rusty bodies, sheet metal, and chassis and suspension components are common when one is dealing with a 70-plus-year-old vehicle. What happens after the blasting process can be the difference between a sad truck owner and a happy builder. Our 1964 Chevy C10 cab recently visited the local blasting establishment, as it had a combination of patina’d paint, rust, and cancer that needed cleaning. Back in the shop and with fresh sheet metal, we started tackling the big items first (A-pillars and rockers). With a solid cab once again, we could concentrate on the numerous smaller areas of interest. Unfortunately, as we proceeded to make said progress, so did Mother Nature, in the form of surface rust.

This was to be expected as we didn’t put anything on the body to mitigate this from happening. A light coat of primer might have helped but would have still been no guarantee. With not a single panel on the cab that needed to be repaired, it didn’t make any sense to apply primer just to have to remove it later; not to mention the gamble it would be to put our final bodywork and paint over a quick dusting of rattle can primer. Instead, we put our head down and moved forward with the sheet metal repairs, knowing that there are options available to tackle the very situation we found ourselves in.

But treating the surface rust is only the beginning of the finishing phase of our cab. After that’s managed and before we send the cab out for final body- and paintwork, we’re going to address the underside, firewall, dash, and interior surfaces. This will allow us to bolt the cab to the chassis permanently and continue with the build as we save some cash for paint- and bodywork.

While there are a myriad of concoctions that many claim will remove surface rust with very little elbow grease, most of them come with more cons than pros. Everything from Muriatic Acid to molasses to Coca-Cola are claimed capable of doing the job, but just the idea of cleaning up the latter and the fact that the former requires being neutralized lest it continue to do the job of eating the iron for eternity, we opted to go with a process with a little more pedigree.

KBS Coatings has made it their ethos, literally, to stop rust, so it should come as no surprise that they have a vast product line of rust prevention and treatment options. From surface preparation to rust mitigation to final topcoat finishing, KBS Coatings offers a product to provide the DIY end user a solution throughout the entire process. Worrying about how that Muriatic Acid bath treatment might react with that gallon of primer that’s been in the cabinet for 10 years and how it will behave with that other ancient can of body filler and whether the final paint finish won’t fish-eye, lift, or otherwise behave badly is a situation we don’t want to find ourselves in. Do it once, do it right, and move onto the next job, all thanks to KBS Coatings.