What you are seeing here is a badly rusted tailgate that was grabbing a lot of attention from the rear. I had do something in the short term to clean it up a little. People (especially those with authority) driving behind me had nothing but nasty rust spots to stare it. It was awful. A friend told me to sand down the rust spots to the bare metal, use an acetone/paint thinner type cleaner, then apply some Rust Converter which causes a chemical change. Basically the rust turns to a hard black paintable surface. I was then suppose to primer it, add a body compound, sand, primer again, and then paint. Well after I applied the rust converter, I was so happy to see the rust disappear, I didn't care about the rough edges, so I just primered and painted. The good news is that the nasty rust spots are mostly gone (I didn't do the bottom of the tail gate as you can see). The bad news is that the spots I did do, are very rough, and when you stand a few feet from the truck you can see the amateur job. I am still happy with my efforts, because it encourages me to do much better next time. It also was enough of a test to give me a little confidence at doing body repair, and I can only get better. When my tailgate is improved, I'll post another photo. For now I've been driving the truck around for a couple weeks like this, and I feel a lot better knowing that 70% of the rust is no longer visible.

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