More Rust to Attend to (Sep 08)

The episode with rust causing the recent MOT fail (see earlier) brought it home to me that despite popular opinion, these cars can suffer from rust as they get on in life. Although galvanised there will be problems in certain places and these problems need to be addressed. So a couple of weeks ago I decided that it was time to stop ignoring what looked to be a few little rust spots on the NS rear quarter panel and get them sorted. As you will see below it was not before time because little spots are not always as little as they appear.

First was the rust around the NS door mirror. This was there when I bought the car and had never got any worse according to the PO. Rust had set in under the base of the mirror before the newer mirrors had been fitted.



All gone now (ignore the paint on the seal as that was there before and is not overspray from the repair)



All the other rust problems were on the rear quarter panel. It was pretty messy inside the light cluster. When I got the car the original tail light was still fitted (see earlier in thread) and the seal design trapped moisture inside the wing. The light design was changed later so that the wing is vented but the damage had already been done to mine:



All the rust had to be cleaned out and some nifty welding done to repair it. Then it got lots of coats of paint and waxoyl to protect it from the elements:



Associated to this there was a problem in the engine bay. What looked to be light rust on the gusset plate turned out to be extensive when I prodded it with a pen. I was pretty gutted when I found this:



The rusty panel was duly cut out, replaced and painted. Again some waxoyl was applied behind the new panel and a smear on the surface that you can see when the engine lid is open.



Finally there was some signs of rust just above the plastic sill cover:



When I took the sill cover off, 18 years of road dirt came out and it was a lot worse than I thought!



This required some extensive welding to repair it and the whole area behind the sill cover was cleaned and coated with waxoyl to prevent future rusting (I'll need to waxoyl it every couple of years). I haven't got a photo with the cover off but the repair is stunning. Here it is with the cover back in place:



Here are a couple of shots of the newly painted rear quarter and door:





I also took the opportunity to get a new headlamp ring painted to replace the old NS one which had always been a bit rusty and in constant need of touching up:



All the work was carried out by a small local body shop (who had been recommended to me and who had already done the front tub repairs). I let them have the car for a couple of weeks so that it could be fitted in between any urgent jobs that came in. This kept the price down a little and I felt comfortable that it wouldn't be a rush job. The price which including much welding, prep and paint came to £500 + VAT (on top of this I supplied them with the new headlamp ring and rubber seals for the sill cover). I would summarise the work they did as a superb finish on the exterior panels you can see and they were very thorough in the repairs and protection applied to the bits that you can't.