many years before i bought my desoto someone removed all the paint, the entire car is surface rust. without blasting or dipping whats the best way to get the metal paintable?

the scotchbrite scrubby pad thingies with abrasive embedded work pretty good. (that's a highly technical description. I'm not sure what they're called in layman's terms)

after that, there will probably be some "black looking" specks remaining [not talking pits here], which is still rust, that should be treated with some sort of "acid etching/neautralizing[?]" stuff to effectivly kill the rust before resorting to the primer/etching coating of choice. i have seen instances where bare metal [with the "specks"]was coated with etching primer/topcoat only to have paint problems appear because those "specks" were not dealt with. just so ya know........

prep-sol or similar will take care of the specks, it's essentially dilute phosphoric acid.