rusty panel - below rear window

[mgoldleaf]

1970 911E
Ok, so the car is rust free, or that was my perception until I started digging into the engine bay this morning trying to get this guy's car running. I noticed a couple of small oily-rusty flakes down by the valve covers and began poking around to find the culprit.

It appears that there have been rusty wheel arches and poor fixes on this car. It is my sister's boyfriends so I hardly care too much, it runs great and I'd consider buying it if it isnt too expensive tofix.

How common is this? I never focused on this area of the car prior to purchase...was too busy looking at the motor proper and enjoying the "rust-free" body and new interior.

They are not taking the car off the road. I not going to suggest a restoration...but I do want to prevent water from getting to the engine bay via the passenger compartment, or visa-versa.

Any suggestions?

/marc

[Fritz]

Congrats on your purchase but sympathies on your rust discovery.

I've got a 73E that has the same problem and yes it is fairly common. The bad news is that it is a very expensive problem to fix depending upon how bad it is. On mine it was up in the corners right below the rear window. It wasn't until I got the wondow out, the rear shelf pad out and the paint between the window and the engine compartment removed that I could see how bad it was. Mine was bad from the corner of the window to halfway down the exterior panel to the engine compartment. I had to get a section from another coup that went from the 1/4 up the rear window to the top 1/4 of the engine compartment and almost out to the rain gutters. The part from a wrecked car was cheap but it was expensive to have it replaced. Luckily, I was doing a strip to bare metal for a repaint anyway so the paint did not matter..

If yours is just that flat panel between the engine compartment and the interior compartment it should not be too bad to put in a patch panel.