Rust investigation.

[player1up]

I, like a lot of us around here have been dealing with alot of rust on our abodies.

In cutting out some old sheet metal I found that the quarter panels on my duster have been patched twice before at the rocker and once before behind the rear wheel.

In my mind it's not enough just to patch and move on, I've gotta know why because if I'm going through all of this trouble to get rid of all the rust I don't want it coming back!
So why did the rockers rust out 3 times in 34 years. Research shows this car spent a number of years in NJ so salty roads might have been a factor, but the underside of the car wasn't rusted at all but the more I cut into the car the more rust I found. Why would the car be MORE rusty on the inside?

Well after replcing the driver front floor, and realizing that the water that caused that rust came from the vinyl roof, I started the journey of finding where the water came from.
anyway to make a long story short, I found that the wing window seals were not touching the car! thus letting water run down the inside of the quarter panel and collect in the rocker. I guess it's just frustrating that for $100 they could have prevented the problem, TWICE!

So check those gaskets. you might save yourself or the next guy some work years down the road

 

[TheBestCar]

Back when our cars were made (ours meaning ALL of the A bodies owned by everyone here) they didnt put as much effort into protecting the body/chasis from corsion thru fully coating the ENTIRE body with all the chemical treatments and acid baths, etc. that they do to todays vehicles. Exposed bare steel, even kept bone dry, WILL corode eventually because corrosion is caused by oxygen for the most part. I delved into this slightly in my response to another thread on this section of the forum, the post titled "Rust Converter/Encapsulator".

The only way to slow the development of corrosion (aside from making sure all seals and gaskets are intact and working as intended) would be to give your car the same treatment they do to new vehicles: strip it to bare chasis then have the whole thing, along with all the individual steel pieces, submerged in an acid bath then all the corrosion preventative chemical baths, then dip in the coatings baths. Very dificult to do, could be done if you really really wanted to. I don't know many with that much ambition though. Next best thing is, if you take it apart to do any repairs, treat everything that you can get at with a rust encapsulator (dipping is still best if at all possible) and coating with the best primers and paints available. If it's exposed to oxygen, it will corrode.

Then again, there would be one other way I can think of that would stop rust and dry rot almost completely. Build a big hermeticly sealed glass case to put your car in, then draw it to a vacume and fill with dry nitrogen. That should curtail corrosion for at least the next couple hundred years. LOL.

Amazing isn't, that which gives us life is so very harmful to everything else on the planet.

 

[player1up]

yeah, it is amazing that if a car stays runing it will last for years... but park it under a tree and it's chia-car in 3 months...