Insides of doors FOS & rusting. Now what?

[yossarian19]

The windows and tracks were coming apart pretty badly and rattling over every bump. Since California is in a drought and I have covered parking, I just tore down the windows to get rid of the rattling. Peering inside the door, though, I can see that years of pine needles have slipped past the window seals & the whole inside of the door is rusting.
How do I take the skin off, or if I don't, what do I do to clean out & treat the sheet metal in there? Don't need it to be showroom quality as this isn't a restoration, I just don't want to lose the tin by neglecting rust.

[OrrieG]

Is it rusting thru the outside of the skin? Big holes or pin holes? Do you want to remove the doors (which may lead to other issues...)?

[yossarian19]

It's not serious yet, no big holes that I recall. Surface rust.
Just don't want it to get there.
I don't think I mind removing the doors, as everything fits pretty wacky already.

[tmoble]

there's two drains at the bottom of each door. They're kind of small, rectangular shaped. use a thin sharp tool and air to clean them out. I made some long pipes out of PVC and copper tube to hook to the shop vac and cleaned the doors out. It was very slow and tedious. Any tube small enough to fit through the window opening get plugged up fast.

If you pull the the handles and panel off the inside there's a lot more room to work with. Have one of those impact tools you strike with a hammer before starting to pull the panels off.

Now that I have the doors off and sandblasted, all is good. I won't be letting stuff build up in there again. I was able to use a screwdriver and twist in it the drain holes, opened them up a little.

[Dan in Pasadena]

Here's what I did on mine before I decided to do a full frame off:

I had the same surface rusting issues in the door bottoms, no cancer. I didn't have leaves, pine needles but DID have accumulated dirt.

Vac'd it out then I soaked rags in the oxalic acid (I THINK) you can get at Home Depot. I can't recall what name it is sold under but it's in gallons in their paint department.

I placed the rags all inside the door bottoms and Then poured more on them. Let it set a couple days and the rust was arrested.

Then I blindly sprayed Rustoleum's aerosol rust preventative product through the window mechanicals access hole.

There were a lot of fumes so I'd wait for it to disperse, check coverage with a flashlight, then go back in and apply more.

I KNOW this isn't the best way to do it but it's also not ignoring it. Now I'll probably cut out the flat bottom of the door, use Rust Bullet on the lower inside & outside door skins and weld in new bottoms. Hope this helps.

PS: The outer door skin is folded over the inner door at the factory creating a thin "pocket" for dirt to get trapped in. I used a knife blade to clean that out, check with flashlight, over and over til I thought I'd gotten as much out as possible and thereby let the acid get in there to neutralize the rust. No way to be entirely certain without cutting the door skin off.