Slugwerks 911E, Act 1; Rust Let the adventure begin

[Slugwerks]

The screen name was chosen for a reason. This is going to take me a long time.

To put the project in perspective I’d like to do this once, and have the car for decades after that. So maybe that will change your advice. Also I am a rookie welder. I won’t be working on the car until early June. In the mean time I’d like to order some of the sheet metal and practice welding between now and then.

I'll attach some photos of my rust problems. At the end of the post.

The Driver side has rust where the plastic rivets were used to hold the kick panel inside the door jam. There is a silver dollar sized whole in the back and about a quarter sized hole in the front. My passenger side has a small hole in the back and rust that is creeping up the striker plate where the rubber seal for the door goes. From the backside the kidney, jack receiver tube, and undertray look solid on both sides.

1) My question is should I replace the entire outer rocker panel, or should I use patches to repair the sections that are rusty?

I only ask because I've seen others needing this repair find that replacing the entire rocker caused some fitment issues. If I cut out the bad sections and replace them with good metal is that a sound solution or is it best to replace the entire rocker.

2) My second question is, should I assume the inner rockers are going to need to be replaced?

Thanks to my trusty rusty peep holes I can see a bit of the inner rockers and what I see looks decent, maybe some slight surface rust, but nothing rusted through.

Thanks in advance.

Driver Side


Passenger Side

[bpu699]

Hmmm...

That really doesn't look bad...

I would replace the small section that goes all the way through, sandblast the rest, and epoxy seal it...

[vmisquez]

Get yourself a good RGB (color) bore scope and do a complete inspection. Its diffucult to tell what needs replacing but from my experience if you can see the rust you have much more hidden rust.

THen again it depends on how passionate you are about reparing rust. You can get good used 3ft scopes on ebay. Its easy to find rust with a color scope.

[Slugwerks]

Thanks guys,

Honestly I don't think the rust is all that bad either. I've discovered more than my fair share on other cars, and this seems like it is really well contained to these small areas.

I want to do it well enough that after a decade of good care and maintenance I don't have to worry about doing it again.

So you are suggesting I get one of these bad boys?
Wireless Borescope 9mm Inspection Color Camera w/Case - eBay (item 110514409839 end time May-01-10 02:30:09 PDT)

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Rich, I think you can rent those scopes from Home Depot or Taylor rental. a good idea to look inside. I'd carefully cut that rust away to get a better look inside. it doesn't look too bad, so I don't expect you'll need to replace the whole rocker, but you will want to coat the inside with POR15 I expect.

looking forward to your progress!

[78SCRSMAN]

You can speculate all you want but you won't know anything until you get in there. Working on my own car, things that look bad on the outside aren't bad at all and vice versa. Some things can't be seen at all from the outside. +1 on the bore scope idea. Home Depot rents them out. There is a good "rust" thread somewhere here that details all the places to look... basically everywhere. Don't be afraid to start cutting, it's gonna get fixed anyway.

[Slugwerks]

Thanks Shuan. Without question there will be some ample rust preventitive going into that inner rocker regardless of the presence of rust or not.

I'll look into getting one of those scopes. I just saw Harbor Freight has the one I linked to on sale for $89. Might be worth just buying one.

78SCRSMAN, amazingly the rest of the car is really quite free of rust. Headlight buckets, fender joining panels, lower portion of doors, jack receiver, window cowels, etc. Cleaner than any of the 3 galvanized 1976+ cars I have had the displeasure of taking apart.

I'll keep you all posted on how the inner rockers turn out. It should be interesting to just see in there.

Thanks again for the help.
Rich

[sfoster13]

The thing about these cars is that they rust from the inside out in the rockers and down through the longitudinals to the torsion bar tube. They can be complete rust buckets and not even show on the outside of the rockers. You have areas on the rocker that will need to be cut out. Forget the scope, cut the visible rust out in the outer rocker. I'm afraid what you'll find won't be pretty but will be very clear once you do. The basic rule of thumb is there is always more rust than you see.

Good luck.

[Fishcop]

Originally Posted by sfoster13

The thing about these cars is that they rust from the inside out in the rockers and down through the longitudinals to the torsion bar tube. They can be complete rust buckets and not even show on the outside of the rockers. You have areas on the rocker that will need to be cut out. Forget the scope, cut the visible rust out in the outer rocker. I'm afraid what you'll find won't be pretty but will be very clear once you do. The basic rule of thumb is there is always more rust than you see.

Good luck.

Ditto. If you can see external rust, you have a lot of internal work to do