I ran over to John's Mustang today and picked up a new fender apron and radiator support.

It's 38 miles there and 38 miles back but they wanted as much as the part to ship just the fender apron. I had the day off so what the heck...I went for a drive.

Now it's time to start taking pretty much everything off the front end of the car. To help with that while I was at John's anyway I picked up the body assembly manual.

My question is related to the metal. The radiator support is already painted. The fender apron is just metal and has some greasy spots on it.

Should I wash the bear metal piece down with simple green to get the grease off, then find one of these metal prep products and prime it (use weld through on the edges) before I start to spot weld it in? Honestly, a friend of mine swears by simply rubbing alcohol as a cheap way to prep a surface for priming / painting.

I know what I did with the gas tank when I put it in a while back was I wiped it down with brake cleaner then primed and painted it...however there was no welding involved with the gas tank.

 

Been off line all weekend due to various reasons.

Just bumping this...what's the best way to prep the metal in question above before welding it all together?

 

I use Metal-Ready because I'm painting everything with POR-15. It's really just phosphoric acid with a zinc additive, but it will neutralize rust and etch the metal for painting.