Fell down a rabbit hole today

AKA why not to buy a rust belt car. Just venting on the hell I found today.

Was sprucing up the DD (e36 318ti) today - getting ready to paint and had a little rust to deal with... The more I poked, the worse it got - ended up tearing the car apart, then cutting out rust. Undercoating was holding a lot together. The passenger floor had a rip through the floor - Another good sized hole by the fuel tank. Was hoping to not have to drop the tank, but I'm not a big fan of garage fires. PO did a good job disguising the damage with great stuff - The more I poked around, the worse it got...

More PO handiwork - he hacked a hole through the rear bumper cover for this. Pretty much anything the PO touched he broke or hacked.

Looks like I'll be making patch panels and rebuilding a jack point or two.- ordered new front fenders since they're pretty cheap. Not happy with this much effort on the DD, but now that I know it's there, can't let it go.

kudos for doing it the right way.

Here in Michigan, we call that factory installed rust.

document the correction in a build thread or ban

when you fix the sills.. do yourself a favour and do the little bit of extra work to fit the later plastic Sill covers. They look better and you can hide your rust repair with them

You call that rust? HA! That's a surface blemish here in PA.

This is why I've been rethinking my ideas of buying a new car anytime soon, and why after purchasing the new Honda I hope that we'll be out of here soon so that its not blemished.

pinchvalve wrote: You call that rust? HA! That's a surface blemish here in PA.

Seriously. You don't even start to fix that until the carpet drags on the ground.

I found the zx2 its going behind the wheel wells. I was thinking about mud flaps. There wife said, "no."

pinchvalve wrote: You call that rust? HA! That's a surface blemish here in PA.

got that bro

And now you see why I never bought E30s that had ANY rust.

pinchvalve wrote: You call that rust? HA! That's a surface blemish here in PA.

Yep. My crusty 1800ES isn't much worse than that...

z31maniac wrote: And now you see why I never bought E30s that had ANY rust.

And why rust-free E30's sell for a premium around here...

Rust is always worse than it looks.

(looks at own DD) Thank you Volvo and your penchant for galvanizing your cars.

And that is why I now fly south to buy cars.

You weren't kidding........did the PO really use foam to fill those holes?

Yep, that's why I've been putting off doing any bodywork on my cars. Once you start digging into it, it gets worse and worse.

LOL, that's nothing.

This is my driver's side floor after cutting out the rusty bits on my CSX:

And the passenger side...

How about the rockers? Or lack thereof....

Stupid GRM classifieds and the temptation of a $100 turbo car with "a little rust"....

Yabba-Dabba-Doo!!!!!

Mazdax605 wrote: Yabba-Dabba-Doo!!!!!

Yup!

You know I'm not kidding because you saw it in person.

This is the rustiest car I have ever turned a wrench on. The allure of a fast and laughably cheap turbo car keeps me going.

I am trying to convince my wife I need this car. (Priced right - AND includes new floors and rails)

I am trying to convince myself that I don't want this car. (rust)

A little progress - this wasn't supposed to be a monster project.

I feel for you. I've seen too many folks, including some here, thing great stuff is a body repair tool. And I suppose if its disclosed to a buyer at least they know what they are in for but its a lazy/crap repair and will cause nothing but extra work down the road.

Glad to see you doing it right, keep up the good work.

Great stuff is exclusively for sealing up rear wheel arches and other non critical stuff on beaters. For structural stuff its better to keep an eye on what metal remains.