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Could you post some pics of the damage?
Do you have a welder?
If not you might be able to put a patch in rust holes and fill them in with body filler.theres a couple good size holes on each about big enough to fit a golf ball in no im not experienced with welding at all , any ideas on wat i should pick up at the store i got a quote of 1700 yes 1700 for them to be replaced.
If you plan to keep the car for a while and don’t have a welder. I would use a heavy duty degreaser and power wash the rockers out then treat the rust with phosphoric acid, it can be found in the US quite easily under various product name, milestone remover at TSC… buy a gallon or more because if you’re a car guy and deal with rust this stuff makes projects go so much easier. Put in rusty parts and they come out like new, bolts, washer nuts, whatever and you can brush it on rust and it will eat it, and it won’t eat the metal…It’s actually in coke and pepsi in small amounts and is what gives those drinks their bite.. Either way it is an irritent but it won’t melt your skin or anything and washes off with water… Treat the rust covered spots with this, several times if needed, I assume by your post you’re dealing with gaping rust holes. Use a wire wheel or in worse case a wire brush after the acid treatment and scrap the surface down until you see more rust, treat it again, repeat, until you’re down to a good base and when you scrap at the treated metal nothing flakes off… Acetone the area, if it’s a beater car prime the treated area and fill with bondo, if you wanna keep the car for the long haul I would weld in new metal and use a good 2 epoxy part primer and paint… The acid does leave a protecting film, but water exposer that rockerpanels face the rust will return quickly… Let us know what you plan to do with the car…. If you just wanna pass the safety you should be able to get away with some bondo and a heavy coat of asphalt undercoating! Did this to a beater buick, actually held up pretty darn good
Do you know anyone with a welder or can you ask around? That’s the key as if not, you will be at the mercy of a body repair facility.
The reason you failed inspection is because those holes effect the structural integrity of the vehicle therefore I do NOT recommend the ‘bondo’ method albeit a clever solution. The best thing to do is see if you can find someone with a welder to help restore the rotted structure. Good luck.
Harbor Freight sells a wire welder that on sale is about 90 bucks that would do the job in my opinion. Just make sure you replace the garbage flux core wire they give you with a quality version. However, I wouldn’t recommend going that route without some practicing at welding, but if you get good with it, you should be able to cut out the bad spots and weld in new panels. It all depends on your confidence in your skills. This is something I wouldn’t get into without a good bit of practice, like I said, because you could seriously weaken the car’s frame integrity if you don’t really know what you’re doing. Also, $1700 will probably buy you a car that will pass your inspections, and you could use the other for your practice.
You can also buy 3M body seam/glue products for patch panels. I have never used the stuff but have herd good things, if you use my acid method it should help provide good adhesion also… I know of a grand am that has new rockers glued on from a local shop that passed the car right after…
I know what Eric is saying about structural integrity, but the car would have passed the inspection if the rocker panels had no integrity left, but there were no holes visable to the naked eye… This being said I have had cars fail for small holes in a door… It all depends on the shop and realistically these things should be properly repaired especially on a uni body car… I don’t know if chev didn’t paint inside their rockers or forgot to used the wrong primer again, but I haven’t seen too many 10 year old GM cars that didn’t have rotten rocker panels, I do live in Ontario though and our vehicles see a lot of salt…
No honest mechanic would recommend bondo as a solution to any hole especially if it’s structural… I just think if it were that important to the cars integrity GM would have been forced to recall their vehicles, like I said all of them I see seem to be rotten! Ford recently had to recall windstars for axles snapping from excessive rust and front ends falling apart… Don’t hear much about that on the news though, after all it isn’t a japanese vehicle so why talk about it incessantly…
Sorry I’ll stop talking…
Quoted From Sorcerer:
You can also buy 3M body seam/glue products for patch panels. I have never used the stuff but have herd good things, if you use my acid method it should help provide good adhesion also… I know of a grand am that has new rockers glued on from a local shop that passed the car right after…
I know what Eric is saying about structural integrity, but the car would have passed the inspection if the rocker panels had no integrity left, but there were no holes visable to the naked eye… This being said I have had cars fail for small holes in a door… It all depends on the shop and realistically these things should be properly repaired especially on a uni body car… I don’t know if chev didn’t paint inside their rockers or forgot to used the wrong primer again, but I haven’t seen too many 10 year old GM cars that didn’t have rotten rocker panels, I do live in Ontario though and our vehicles see a lot of salt…
No honest mechanic would recommend bondo as a solution to any hole especially if it’s structural… I just think if it were that important to the cars integrity GM would have been forced to recall their vehicles, like I said all of them I see seem to be rotten! Ford recently had to recall windstars for axles snapping from excessive rust and front ends falling apart… Don’t hear much about that on the news though, after all it isn’t a japanese vehicle so why talk about it incessantly…
Sorry I’ll stop talking…
“No honest mechanic would recommend bondo as a solution to any hole” Is that pointed at me??
Quoted From Trcustoms719:
“No honest mechanic would recommend bondo as a solution to any hole” Is that pointed at me??
Not at all, in my first post I recommended it man…
If it were my car and a just get me from A to B car I would do it and as I said in my first post I’ve done it before and passed the safety…
Sorry for that anyway, maybe bad wording on my part, just trying to give as much info on my experience with such problems… Writing sometimes can sound different to the reader then the person writing it…
cheers
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