Paint Rust!

[l008com]

I live in Massachusetts so rust is always a problem. They over-sand the hell out of the roads around here, it is super annoying!
But my 15 year old truck so far has been doing very well on the top side. Until this little SOB popped out out of nowhere. I'm pretty observant when it comes to my own vehicle and I've never seen this here before and suddenly there it is!

What are my options here?
Can I DiY a repair (with no body/paint experience)?
If I were to get is professionally repaired, how much do you think it would cost? Would they be able to blent the paint? I really don't want to have to paint the entire panel. It is of course on the largest panel the vehicle has.

 

[Sparky]

Dang. By the time you see it like that, you know it is 10x worse behind there.
Yes a half decent shop can blend the paint. I just know a lot of places don't like doing rust repairs because it inevitably comes back at some point and rust repair is near impossible to guarantee.

 

[l008com]

Are there any DIY ways I can repair this and make it look.... acceptable? Grinding off the rust is easy enough with a wire wheel. And I suppose I could try to take it off so only the paint over rust gets scuffed up. It's probably one of the easier colors to hide defects in but I'm not sure how I'd proceed from there?

 

[Sparky]

Sometimes you just gotta start grinding and see what you end up with. Get a rattle can base and a clear and try to blend it as best as you can? I have no experience with doing any actual half decent paint job. I used bed liner on the lower half of my Trailblazer (followed body lines) when I did some redneck body work to patch a bunch of holes. It came out OK for what it was.

 

[xavierny25]

I followed Chris fix video tutorial and got great results as you can see. I can get a better picture later today for you. I wish I would of taken more pics but I just wanted to get it done.

I waited till it got alot worse then what you have now so taking care of it sooner then later is best.


Another thing dont use blue painters tape the adhesive left behind is bare to remove use the yellow which leaves close to nothing behind when removed

Edit: I was able to pull up and screenshot an older photo of the rusty area. It was even worse then this when I started to work on it. About 1" over the body flare line and 8" long. The underlying side was gone.

 

[Mike534x]

That looks like its coming out pretty good! The fender line looks on point as well. Mines been bubbling up on the driver side, where the rear corner of the bumper meets the fender. I wish it was further up so it'd be easier to patch.

 

[l008com]

So given how small mine is right now, is there a simpler way to do it? Grind off the rust, do no body work, just paint it as is? It looks like the only place theres going to be NO metal is on the part that folds inside. I wouldn't miss that.

I have wire wheels I could put in a drill and clean it up. But I've never painted a car before
There are a lot of paint products at auto zone, and my color is fairly basic? For that matter, it's a small enough area that I could probably get the whole thing with just a touch-up?

 

[Sparky]

Well I'm just warning you from past experience what you see is only a portion of what's actually going on. Visible rust tends to be like an iceberg, the rest is hidden but once you start grinding it out you'll find the affected spot is much bigger than what is initially visible.