Rusty wings (S2) - advice

[zcacogp]

Chaps,

Heigh ho - here's the thread I hoped I would never post, but it seems necessary.

I know that the bottom corners of the front wings on my S2 have had the first tinges of rust at the corners of them for a few years. I have applied underseal to them pretty liberally, but at the recent RAS workshop day, when my car was on the lift, I noticed that the offside wing was getting pretty bad. Today I took the arch liner and the wing trim off and cleaned everything up, with a wire brush on an electric drill and then with a degreaser.

It's not pretty. It looks like this:

Nearside:

Offside:

The nearside clearly is nowhere near as bad as the offside. It can have a thick layer of red oxide (or BH Hydrate 80, which is meant to be much better) applied and left, I reckon. Perhaps with some thick underseal on the inside of it. And paint on the outside, clearly. The difficulty is what to do with the offside? This has rather more material missing (probably an area about the size of a 50p piece, and noticable), and this will need to be replaced. I have a friend who has offered to make up a new section and weld it in. I trust him, and while he admits that the welding won't perhaps be as good as a pro, it is in the textured (wurth?) area, so any rough bits can easily be disguised.

So, my questions are ... what would anyone else suggest? How much would I probably be looking at to have a similar welding job done by a pro (rough figures!)? Could this work be done with the wing on the car? A new wing would be how much? Where does anyone suggest I should get some paint to have the area re-done (brush/rattle can is fine - as mentioned, it is on the rough bit of the panel, and money is a little tight at the moment on account of me not having a job!) On the topic of paint I am mindful of the other thread going at the moment about colour match ...

Oh, and if anyone wants to make some comiseratory comments then they would be welcomed. I know the old girl is getting on a little, but she's only got 153k on the clock and drives superbly. I don't think she's anywhere near ready for the scrapyard just yet ... [X(]

Thanks.


Oli.

 

[pauljmcnulty]

That's not bad. Really, I've seen very few that aren't either worse or have been done already. [&:]

 

[appletonn]

Oli, i think mine was at least as bad as that.

I had the sills stripped back, the lower half of each front wing removed and new metal welded in plus the same on the bottom of one rear wing and the everything repainted and stone chip protected etc plus Waxoyled liberally in sills etc- done by a classic car restoration place in Cheshire and was over £1k, but superbly done.

If you are planning to keep the old girl, rather than upgrade to a Turbo [], then I would say get it done 'properly' and then she'll be good for another 20 yrs - especially as she is so well sorted mechanically.

Still makes me laugh when I read those magazine buyers guides that tell prospective owners not to worry about rust as these cars were fully galvanised.... clue in the word 'were'!!!

 

[peanut]

tough luck ollie. These things always come along at the wrong time don't they!.
My S2 has developed holes in the cills because I've been too lazy to deal with them .

If i were you for a simple quick cheapndirty repair I'd
Cut out the rust back to reasonably sound metal,
Cut some pieces out of a sound scrapped 944 and piece them into your wings .
I have used brazing rather than welding before now, as long as not too much heat is applied. The secret with either welding or brazing these small bits is do a little at a time and then cool the metal so that it doesn't distort.

Small G clamps will hold the two pieces together and act as a useful heatsink but will get in the way when welding. I would probably drill two small holes and pop -rivet the two pieces together to keep them in position and then drill and fill the rivet holes with weld aftwards

Never run along a seam with weld or it will distort with the heat and you'll be using tons of filla. Better to gradually fill the joint by spot welds

I would try get hold of a 'joddler' to 'step' the two pieces of metal so that you get a flush, strong joint with minimum of filla required.
I might be tempted to fill with lead. MKll Jags used lots of lead filla around lights and seams on the wings. Easy to do if you know how.
That should last a good 3-4 years or long enough to save up for nice new wings anyway.

Good luck on the job front. I was made redundant 5 months ago and only becoming a full time carer for my Dad has saved us from the workhouse.

 

[awattam]

This is something I'm going to have to do with mine sometime. I think this area gets a lot of stones, water salt etc fired at it by the front wheel.

When I do it I'll be cutting back to good metal and welding in small repair sections of good steel. Then anti rust primer and stonechip/topcoat. My car is never going to be a showcar and this area is quite hidden from view so finish isn't critical. Peanut gives lots of good advice about welding (not getting it too hot, joggling the edges etc) but I'd avoid brazing if you've got access to a welder. Also make the repair sections before you cut out the old metal so you've got soemthing to make patterns from.

With time and effort the repair should be virtually invisible and (if you do it yourself) virtually free!

 

[peanut]

ORIGINAL: awattam
but I'd avoid brazing if you've got access to a welder.

yes brazing not necessarily the best option but a good altermative if the metal you are working with is very thin/weak. Also it doesn't rust which is another plus point in its favour
Best of all is a spot welder. God what I'd have given for one of those and a plasma cutter all the years I spent welding together MGB's and Datsun 240Z's groan

Forgot to say Ollie you should use a paint stripper or hair dryer to remove the clear plastic stoneguards before doing anything further.

 

[graham.webb]

Doesn't look too bad...I had both wings done as part of the n/s sill job so their cost was "lost" in the whole job. It was just over £1k but done by a specialist bodyshop who cut all rust back to sound metal, then welded in steel plates before painting and waxoyling. The wings stayed on the car (interesting, the o/s was worse on mine too).

A nice job...I'm in this for the long term, so don't mind the cost so long as I don't have to do it again!!

 

[graham.webb]

B***er....that's the after shot. I'll try and embed the before shot this time!

 

[Copperman05]

Oli, I would say that looks pretty normal to me, as Paul says most are either worse of have already been sorted. How does the wing look at the back, behind the plastic strip? Water from the windscreen washes down the inner side on the wings and corrodes from the inside out..

Daytona Coachworks in Stevenage are very familiar with these cars, the owener Dave has a 928 and is a PCGB member. Not too expensive either http://www.daytonacoachworx.co.uk/index.htm I took mine there for some minor work, as the bottom of my wings are not that bad they told me not to worry about it for a while and get it sorted when needs arise.

Now that you have made a big hole you may not be able to do that![]

Edd

 

[Alpine]

I agree, they don't look too bad. The nearside you can just paint over yourself. The drivers side I think you will have no option but to have new metal welded in. You could repair with a fibreglass piece but it might only last 6 months.

I had both of my bottom sections cut out and new metal welded in last year, £400 plus vat in total, including paint. The wings don't need to come off. If you keep any respraying to the Wurth then it will save money as otherwise the whole wing will need a repaint.

 

[graham.webb]

Forgot to mention that...it agrees with advice from Specialist Paintwork when including the driver's side in my sill job: do it early so the repaint stays within the stone chip paint area.

On that basis it's a good job you've uncovered it now!

 

[awattam]

Looking back at the photos again I'd actually be tempted to replace metal on both sides rather than just repainting. In my experience, whatever you do to cover up/treat any metal which isn't shiny new will just lead to rust coming back through in next to no time. This is particularly bad if it's trapped under stone chipas it seems to eat away without you noticeing.

 

[diabloam]

yeah i agree, they aint actually too bad, know mine were a lot worse. I took the wings off and welded new sections on, got the bottoms sand blasted first which was the dogs danglys for getting to solid metal. MIG isnt hard to learn and you can be doing decent welds on the bench in half hour if you fancy investing in a machine. I did mine myself and when i get back from offshore my car should be out the bodyshop, ended up spraying whole car bar the roof, so hoping its going to look spectacular. If you can weld it yourself or get your mate to do it, and you keep it below the stone chip line you can get it painted up to stone chip line fairly cheap. Guess your sills are ok, given these wings are not too bad for a 944. Just seems to be a quirk of the car, but in the whole 944's given there age are remarkably rot resistant, what other 20 year plus cars stay in such good shape, nothing from the mainstream manufacturers anyway, guess we all will have to live with it, but its good to see that most 944's get this remedial work as it would scrap the majority of other types of cars of this age thats for sure. Dinitrol is great for prevention, big fan.